I'm currently trying desperately to finish my master's degree from Georgia Southern in Teaching & Learning. As a result, I've had to write a lot of papers of various lengths and requirements.
Here's what the experience has reminded me regarding being a student:
Google Docs is just as powerful as I originally thought.
In addition to closing in on completion of my master’s, I’m also teaching summer school. So, when the student I have (you read that right) is working on his assignments, I’m monitoring what he’s doing in one browser with all of his Google Docs open while I work in a different window on the work I’ve been assigned. Being able to switch between windows, and accounts, helps me compartmentalize and focus on the tasks at hand.
Additionally, I don’t always finish my own school work in the morning, so having a spot to leave it and come back to powerful. Because a basic and well-known feature of Google Docs is autosave, I can close up shop, move the shop, and pick up where I left off.
Lastly, since I’ve been using Google Docs as a student, I get to see it function the way my students do. One tip I now have for my students is shown below in a screenshot. To prevent flipping back and forth from assignment to Doc, I’ll now recommend students copy\paste their topic into a comment attached to the title of the paper. You can see that here:
Here's what the experience has reminded me regarding being a student:
Google Docs is just as powerful as I originally thought.
In addition to closing in on completion of my master’s, I’m also teaching summer school. So, when the student I have (you read that right) is working on his assignments, I’m monitoring what he’s doing in one browser with all of his Google Docs open while I work in a different window on the work I’ve been assigned. Being able to switch between windows, and accounts, helps me compartmentalize and focus on the tasks at hand.
Additionally, I don’t always finish my own school work in the morning, so having a spot to leave it and come back to powerful. Because a basic and well-known feature of Google Docs is autosave, I can close up shop, move the shop, and pick up where I left off.
Lastly, since I’ve been using Google Docs as a student, I get to see it function the way my students do. One tip I now have for my students is shown below in a screenshot. To prevent flipping back and forth from assignment to Doc, I’ll now recommend students copy\paste their topic into a comment attached to the title of the paper. You can see that here:
Writing requirements should be clear, and should be named according to purpose.
I’ve written a number of reflections that were actually analyses this summer. Simply put, a reflective essay is a form of writing that examines and observes the progress of the writer’s individual experience. If the student isn’t writing about their own personal experience at any point, he or she isn’t writing a reflection. In other areas, if the assignment is called one thing and requires something unrelated to its name, then confusion and frustration can build in the student.
For feedback, “timely” and “specific” should always go together.
Ask anyone who’s ever taken my class, and you’ll discover that I’m a wholly inadequate provider of timely feedback, but what I hope is you’ll also find that when feedback is provided--for writing assignments in particular--it’s specific and helpful. The reminder I’m getting on the other side of the desk this summer is that “timely” and “specific” should go everywhere together. I think this year I’m going to add a question to my beginning of the year survey, which I’m likely to completely overhaul, that requests a definition of “timely” feedback to see what students are expecting.
How to answer “So what?” about learning is more important than I think many college professors realize.
There is a lot of theory in one of my classes. So much so, that I have an article in my Google Drive that has a 5-page list of references and a page of notes at the end of a 20-page body proposing more research that could be happening in education. To begin answering the “So what?” of that article is impossible because I’m not given the chance to reflect on my own practice (see #2 above) and the research isn’t actually being conducted, it’s just being discussed as possible and necessary.
If students read, write about, and discuss something, it should prepare them for a longer work to be read or for some aspect of their life. And then, per reminder 2 above, they should be given the chance to reflect on their own experiences in relation to the reading.
All of this is to say that I’m enjoying one of my classes this summer and I’ll be glad the other one will end soon, but that I’m gaining experience as a student again to better aid my own students when we reconvene in the fall.
And that, the reconvening in the classroom with students, is something I’ll look forward to being in mid-July. Until then, I hope I keep picking up reminders of what it’s like to be them.
I’ve written a number of reflections that were actually analyses this summer. Simply put, a reflective essay is a form of writing that examines and observes the progress of the writer’s individual experience. If the student isn’t writing about their own personal experience at any point, he or she isn’t writing a reflection. In other areas, if the assignment is called one thing and requires something unrelated to its name, then confusion and frustration can build in the student.
For feedback, “timely” and “specific” should always go together.
Ask anyone who’s ever taken my class, and you’ll discover that I’m a wholly inadequate provider of timely feedback, but what I hope is you’ll also find that when feedback is provided--for writing assignments in particular--it’s specific and helpful. The reminder I’m getting on the other side of the desk this summer is that “timely” and “specific” should go everywhere together. I think this year I’m going to add a question to my beginning of the year survey, which I’m likely to completely overhaul, that requests a definition of “timely” feedback to see what students are expecting.
How to answer “So what?” about learning is more important than I think many college professors realize.
There is a lot of theory in one of my classes. So much so, that I have an article in my Google Drive that has a 5-page list of references and a page of notes at the end of a 20-page body proposing more research that could be happening in education. To begin answering the “So what?” of that article is impossible because I’m not given the chance to reflect on my own practice (see #2 above) and the research isn’t actually being conducted, it’s just being discussed as possible and necessary.
If students read, write about, and discuss something, it should prepare them for a longer work to be read or for some aspect of their life. And then, per reminder 2 above, they should be given the chance to reflect on their own experiences in relation to the reading.
All of this is to say that I’m enjoying one of my classes this summer and I’ll be glad the other one will end soon, but that I’m gaining experience as a student again to better aid my own students when we reconvene in the fall.
And that, the reconvening in the classroom with students, is something I’ll look forward to being in mid-July. Until then, I hope I keep picking up reminders of what it’s like to be them.