Renton Technical College March 2003
Office of Instructional Improvement Volume 9 No. 7
Evaluating Students’ “ Soft Skills”
Susie Navone has passed on an interesting checklist you can use to help your students rate their competencies in the SCANS skills: interpersonal relations teamwork attitude, etc. As the introductory materials explain, you need to rate the skills in terms of the importance to your field, once done, this would be a useful tool to let students know where they stand, what skills to work on as well as a basis as you prepare letters of reference. http://www.workforce.com/archive/article/23/35/27.php
Name This Column!!
In the grand tradition of Ann Landers' "Dear Ann" and Abigail Van Buren's "Dear Abby" we are instituting a new column and would like your suggestions for a good name. The new column will be a place to ask questions like, "Who do I see to convert Back-to-Industry funds to pay for part of my degree program?" (answer: Lisa Ziemer) If the brain trust at Instructional Improvement doesn't know the answer to your question, we will track it down. So help us with a title: "Dear Instructional Improvement" seems too pompous for us so, somebody, please come up with something better!
Q. How do you answer the question, " Why do we have to learn this?"
A. If you hear this often, you may need to check your course competencies. Are you teaching things that students already know? Is the lesson all lecture, with no interaction? You cannot possibly make every learning activity the very best, but you need to let the students know the what and why of the activity. Letting them know the value and benefits will help them see the relevance. Sometimes a pre-assessment will let you know what level of experience and ability the class has so you can begin at the right level. Some instructors have the class figure out why they are learning a particular skill. If you are unable to tie the activity to a competency, then perhaps it does not need teaching.
Online Writing Center
Noreen Light recommends the website Online Writing Center at Southern Illinois University. There arepapers directed toward different topics and different levels/styles of writing from prose to research papers. Noreen chose the Steps in Studying for Exams and Tips for Writing Essays to reproduce for her students. This link takes you to the article www.siu.edu/~write
The Teacher as a Person
In Qualities of Effective Teachers, James H. Stronge reviews the affective characteristics, or emotional and social behaviors that are linked to student achievement. In the Chapter “The Teacher as a Person” he explores the various affective roles caring, listening, understanding, knowing students and others that effective instructors demonstrate. The chapter concludes with a bibliographic matrix identifying sources for information for various roles. http://www.ascd.org/cms/objectlib/ascdframeset/index.cfm?publication=http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/2002stronge/2002strongetoc.html
Assess Often to Improve Learning
If you use quizzes, tests, written assessments and other activities to determine where students stand in regard to course competencies, you give yourself an opportunity to map what you taught well and what needs review. You also give the students another change to demonstrate their success. This article from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) Educational Leadership, Feb. 2003 discusses the benefits of frequent assessment as part of a process that includes corrective instruction. View it at http://www.ascd.org/publications/ed_lead/index.html click on “How Classroom Assessments Improve Learning.” By Thomas Guskey.
Here’s What Worked for Me…
Nancy Hampson in Health Occupations shares an authentic activity to help students understand medical language in her Medical Terminology class. Dividing the class into four teams, she gives each team the initial paragraph of a medical report, which contains the diagnosis and some basic facts, and then she gives each team a set of the rest of the paragraphs scrambled up. Nancy reports that reassembling the reports requires the students to read a lot of medical stuff, to understand the language rather than just memorizing words, to use some critical thinking skills, and to interact with their classmates—all valuable outcomes. After the first batch of fairly easy reports, she distributes a group of harder ones. Nancy observes that the students had a good time doing this and were quite proud of themselves when they had pieced their report all back together correctly. mailto:
Make your handouts more interactive and more fun
Robert W. Pike says handouts don’t have to be boring. He discusses the visual design of handouts, ways to make them more interactive and special things to include. He covers 10 different kinds of handouts, with special tips for each type at http://66.89.55.104/synergy/emailmgmt/moreinfo/moreinfo.cfm?member_id=292276&sponsor_id=377&content_id=3314&b1=221&b2=222&b3=222
Working on your accent?
Washington State University's Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences is offering a computer-based, noncredit distance education course designed for non-native speakers of English who wish to modify their accents when speaking English. You can read more about the course at http://www.libarts.wsu.edu/speechhearing/academics/distance%20courses/distance%20course-accent%20reduction.htm
Job-Search Skills for your students
Linda Carlson, author of How to Find a Good Job in Seattle, gave a workshop in mid-February on Effective Job-Search skills. Linda presented a copy to the Renton Technical College Library and four lucky workshop attendees also received a copy. If you are interested in some of her tips, click on her presentation outline.
Quotable
You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful. ~ Marie Curie
The mission of the Office of Instructional Improvement is to advance educational strategies, seek to improve the quality of learning environments, and support RTC staff as they prepare a diverse student population for work.