At my place of work,  critical thinking is one of the most important, yet one of the most difficult skills, our students will need to develop. Being able to look at a problem from multiple angles, deconstruct biases and personal opinions to see the situation for what it really is will help them to sift through vast amounts of information to find the best answers to their questions.  By using critical thinking skills, we are able to open our minds to multiple possibilities, helping us to make the best educated decision possible. 

The video, 5 Tips to Improve Your Critical Thinking by Samantha Agoos, discusses five steps to go through which will allow one to carefully deconstruct a situation and reveal any bias and manipulation which may sway an initial response to a difficult question.  By systematically moving through these steps, only the most useful and reliable information will remain allowing for the best possible decision.

Let's take a look at her 5 steps: 

1.  Formulate Your Question:  by asking yourself clearly what specific answer you are looking for. The more specific and honestly you look at your needs, the better you will be able to find the best answer.

2.  Gather Your Information:  Research possible answers by looking at relevant information and seeking expert advice or testimonials.  The more information you have surrounding your question, the more educated you will be about possible options and therefore final solutions.

3.  Apply Information to Your Developing Answer:  Based on the information you have gathered, how does it challenge your interpretation of things you know? Are your thoughts and ideas logically sound? What other influencers are shaping your interpretation of information?

4.  Consider the Implications:  What would the long term results be following your response, and would there be any unintended consequences to your solution?  Would the cons outweigh the initial pros to our decision?

5.  Explore Other Points of View:  Learning from others' experiences and knowledge will allow for better evaluation of all possible choices, resulting in informed decisions through greater understanding of multiple views.  Understanding other's points of view will also help you to better understand your own.

Critical thinking skills are important to develop as it works to motivate your intellectual self improvement and promotes a more creative mindset by opening yourself to discovering new thoughts, ideas and concepts.  In doing so, you will also become a better team-player as you will be better able to understand another's way of thinking and provide you alternate views to solving the same question. 

Video Source: Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dItUGF8GdTw

As part of the PIDP 3260 course, we were to make a digital project on an assessment strategy of our choice, used for assessing our instructor ability.

I chose to do an infographic on using video-recording of a class, used to view a number of things - most notably how the instructor conducts their self in front of their students.

​Check out  my infographic below and let me know your thoughts!

​https://magic.piktochart.com/output/11855419-video-self-assessment

This short and sweet video has an important message that all teachers need to remember when we walk into the classroom (or sign in to it) every day.

Curiosity is a huge part of learning, and it is what pushes us to delve deeper into meaning in order to understand more.  Encourage curiosity in your students, and if you don't know the answer to their questions, figure it out!

Teaching never seems to follow the plan you set for the day, and that is okay.  "Embrace the Mess", like parenting.  Sometimes the ugliest messes result in the best learning as we can often build a whole from the pieces.

And lastly, practice reflection: as we have been encouraged to do since day one of the PIDP.  As we review daily, what we know and how we present it to others, it creates our own curiosity and pushes us to learn more and in new ways, the same as we encourage our students to do. 

So spare 6 minutes of your day and open your thoughts to what it took Ramsey Musallam a medical emergency to realize.

Video Source:  https://youtu.be/YsYHqfk0X2A

As I near the end of my courses at VCC prior to my Capstone Project, I marvel at just how far I have come since my first class with Glenn Galy.  I hadn't been in a classroom for over twenty years, other than the ones I had personally been teaching in, and found it a strange adjustment from my youthful years of passively sitting in a desk listening to boring lectures and taking notes to be memorized, to being an active participant in my own growth and development. 
 
Perhaps the most important thing I have learned is that I know more than I thought I did, I just didn't know before taking these courses how to connect all the dots in a meaningful way to create a much larger picture!  Ideas that I thought were my own, are actually shared by many, such as how to best manage students within a classroom. Other ideas I had previously thought were common knowledge, were actually only culturally relevant and that therefore I had been rather spoiled over the years by having smart, diligent, and eager to please students always sitting in-front of me, rarely questioning my "expertise". Other things...I knew nothing about... but thankfully there are courses like Media Enhanced Learning!!  

Questions and points of confusion that I thought were my own downfall, are actually shared by many - and studying with my peers at VCC has helped me understand and answer a lot of these unknowns therefore making me a stronger instructor, and person.

One thing that I will definitely take with me after leaving this program is the understanding that I will never know it all, and that each day brings with it my own learning and further understanding of my students, of my course information, and the weird and wonderful workings of this world we live in.  Another thing that I realized is that I love to learn, which is why I love to teach!  It isn't just my job, I truly want to help people improve their lives through knowledge, and the best way for me to do that is by continuously striving to improve my own knowledge as well. 

Having said that, I know I can always improve, as to think that I by any means know it all is a laughable notion, as each student teaches me something new each and every single day.  It is a beautifully reciprocating process and one of my goals will remain instilling the desire in them to ask "why".

Learning is a never ending journey, and I am proof that even old dogs can learn new tricks!


​Quote:  John Cotton Dana (1856-1929)  

In today's Faculty Focus by Maryellen Weimer, Phd, entitled Clear Criteria: A Good Way to Improve Participation, she introduced five final criteria necessary for fairly grading of classroom participation.  As mentioned in her article, we as teachers often assume that students understand what we mean by "participation", when in fact the rules and criteria that we are looking for and grading students on are rarely, if ever clearly, stated for them to see and gauge their participation on.  For international students, the need for teachers to be as clear as possible on what we want our newcomers to Canada to achieve, is more important than ever as participation in class means vastly different things depending on one's country of origin.

Dr. Weimer presents her five final criteria for student participation as follows: 

1. Preparation: the extent of your reading, analyzing and understanding of the material, demonstrated by contribution to discussion.
2. Contribution to discussion: the extent to which you volunteered answers, asked relevant questions, expressed your own opinions and analyzed the contributions of others.
3. Group skills: the extent to which you allowed others to contribute, avoided class domination, shared ideas with others, assisted others, provided positive feedback to others and exhibited tolerance and respect for others.
4. Communication skills: the quality of your expression, clarity, conciseness, use of appropriate vocabulary, confidence.
5. Attendance: includes punctuality.” (Dancer and Kamvounias, p. 448)

In my class on medical terminology, class participation has always been part of the grades, mostly because part of the course objectives is teaching students how to communicate and participate in discussions as they are going to be expected to do in the workplace.  We talk about it, I tell them what I expect, I guide them along their way...  But I have never written it down, as it is written above, for my students to see! How could I have not done that for them?

I have a new class of students starting next week, on March 7th, and guess what I am going to be busy this weekend making for them? An infographic indicating exactly what Dr. Weimer has shared with us in today's Faculty Focus, which is clearly and simply showing my students, in writing, what I mean by class participation so they will be able to better modify their actions to meet my expectations.

How simple is that?!



Source:   Weimer, M., PhD. (2016). Clear Criteria: A Good Way to Improve Participation . Retrieved March 02, 2016, from http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/clear-criteria-a-good-way-to-improve-participation/?utm_campaign=Faculty Focus  

Dancer, D. and Kamvounias, P., (2005). Student involvement in assessment: A project designed to assess class participation fairly and reliably. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 30 (4), 445-454.

Photo Source:  Put your hand up if you're having a good time.  Mick Wernej: Flickr

Personally, I can't remember a time when I wasn't learning about something. Whether through a hobby, raising a family, training the dog, or working on job skills, there has nary been a moment in my life where I wasn't wanting and trying to learn more!

When I first started teaching, I was overseas and the internet was still an unknown, so finding information on instructing was not an easy feat. As the years moved on, however, more and more information on learning and how to teach has come available in many forms ranging from research studies, to videos, to free courses online, not to mention programmes such as the one at VCC on how to teach adults. Learning has never been easier, and the expectation to keep up with the evolution of one's own field is stronger than ever, as it should.  With innovations in technology and better understanding of humankind in general, there is always something new to learn with the tools and opportunities that keep us abreast of all these changes.

With regards to one's own profession and workplace, it is increasingly important to maintain a high level of competence through continued learning. As Derik McArthur mentions in his article, "Lifelong learning constantly challenges us to adapt and explore outside of our comfort zone and apply our new skills in our workplace." (2013).  By doing so we expand our knowledge and skills set, we are not only more efficient at our jobs, but we also increase our worth to our company (and hopefully paycheck as well!).  In a nutshell, lifelong learning in our profession is what keeps us valuable as an employee, and increases our employability when moving up our out from our current employment. Workers who shun change and evolution in their field are at a disadvantage and face the possibility of their position becoming obsolete.

On a personal note, as I teach in a college for nursing, keeping up with changes in healthcare and all that is related to it is vitally important as we prepare our students for the work place. Just yesterday I received a new textbook for medical terminology, 11th Edition, which renews itself almost yearly.  Although much of the terminology stays the same, there are continual advancements and altered views as to what constitutes proper patient care, advancements in tests and procedures, and treatment / prevention of disease.  The profession is never static, and progress is being made on a daily basis and it is important to all healthcare workers to keep up with this progress to perform their job effectively.

As a consumer of health care, I expect to always receive the best treatment available, and that means that healthcare professionals who care for me also must keep up with the evolution of knowledge in their field.   

Below is a short clip by Brian Tracy , and the importance of continuing education. not only for the workplace, but for personal development as well.



Reference source:   Lifelong Learning: Advocating Professional Development. (2013). Retrieved February 22, 2016, from http://irc.queensu.ca/articles/lifelong-learning-advocating-professional-development

Blackboard graphic : https://openclipart.org/detail/3028/chalkboard 

Video: Develop the Habit of Lifelong Learning for Professional Development

I found a great TedTalk by Garr Reynolds' talk in Osaka 2012.  As he mentions in his talk, lectures do not have to be boring although 80% of the time, they apparently are.

Have a look at his video below to get some tips and pointers on how to liven up your class time with your students.  If you are pressed for time, like many of us are these days, you may want to fast forward to 8:35 which is when his ideas really start to take off.

Video Source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdtLELVhEQg

 As my title states, I love talking and explaining everything I know to my students, although I hadn't thought that what I do truly falls into the category of lecturing. Reading Chapter 6 in The Skillful Teacher by Brookfield, has broadened my horizons a little in what creative lecturing all encompasses and how they can be helpful, rather than tediously boring, leaving me with a better understanding of what I do in my classroom and how it does indeed fall into the category of lecturing. 

Brookfield brings up five different reasons that lectures are useful in the classroom. They include lecturing to establish the broad outline of a body of material, to explain using examples different concepts or ideas that learners might find difficulty understanding, introducing alternative perspectives or interpretations, for modelling intellectual attitudes and behaviours that we want our students to follow, and lastly, of course, to encourage our students interest in a particular topic. This is all great, but these aren't the only important aspects of lecturing in the classroom. It is HOW one lectures that really matters.

Beginning on page 73, Brookfield discusses characteristics that make lectures helpful to students.  Including a variety of teaching and communication approaches including using silence (one of my favorites!!), changing your location around the classroom (ditch the podium, please), and breaking lectures down into much more digestible portions (of 10 - 15 minutes) that each deal with a specific piece of information, are some ideas mentioned to help keep lectures manageable for your students.

A few more aspects to successful lecturing that Brookfield mentions are found on pages 80 and 81. By beginning a talk (or lecture) with a question, students will start listening for the answer right from the start, and will also begin to recall information to see if they already know the answer. But don't stop there with your questions! Finish off your lecture with unanswered questions still lingering in the air, those that were raised from the new knowledge students received and that might not even be answerable with the knowledge that students have to this point.  Keep them guessing and thinking, partly by introducing alternative perspectives that they might not have thought of before.

I remember one instructor in my past made us support an opposite view from our own beliefs in discussions, and it was very mind-opening to have to factually and emotionally support an opposite point of view with the same passion as our "true" belief.  It made for some very interesting discussions following his lectures.

Lectures need not be boring or stifling like those of the past! Short, interactive, and truly informational talks that serve a direct purpose can have a great impact and open the doors for further discussion and thought. 

Brookfield, S. D. (2015).  The skillful teacher: On technique, trust, and responsiveness in the classroom (3rd ed.)  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Photo source: https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7283/8736820287_5e5aeb48da.jpg

 Here in British Columbia, private career colleges are governed by an organization called PCTIA (Private Career Training Institutions Agency), which provides protection to students by setting basic standards of educational quality which must be met and maintained by institutions seeking to be accredited through the Agency.

It isn't easy to become accredited by PCTIA, and there is a great deal of work required to maintain accreditation, but for institutions truly focused on student success and educational quality, it is a burden that is happily carried out.  However, there are institutions in BC that are focused more on their financial bottom line than the welfare of their students, many of whom are here internationally, and who knowingly offer programs that are not in the best interest of their students or the careers into which they are hoping to enter, and this is where PCTIA's role is so important.

A few years ago, an institution called Royal Canadian Institute of Technology had their accreditation removed and their two locations closed for failing to provide their students with the education they had paid for.  As this school taught a program similar to one taught at my current college, we were sadly aware of how little their students were receiving.  Many of our students were friends with students attending RCIT, and there were many stories of instructors not showing up for class and students getting "study periods" where they simply read and studied their textbooks without receiving any guidance or instruction.  We also heard of classroom instruction being provided by individuals who did not know, nor belong to, the profession that they were instructing meaning that student questions were never answered because the instructor did not know the answers.

When RCIT was closed by PCTIA, our school accepted a number of their Internationally Educated Nurses into our program so they could continue their studies.  Without an agency such as PCTIA, these individuals would have paid a substantial amount of money for an education and training that never would have been received, resulting in them unable to secure employment in the future and their probably return to their countries not having succeeded in their dreams.

My current college does have PCTIA Accreditation, and we work hard to always uphold their expectations, and the expectations of our students and their families. PCTIA keeps a tight reign on their accredited schools by requesting proof of maintenance of school and student records on a yearly basis, with a much greater in-depth audit being undertaken every 5 years.  It definitely is a lot of work writing reports and fulfilling set obligations to maintain accreditation, but to imagine a world without such a group protecting vulnerable student populations would be much worse for all of us.

Check out the links below, one from PCTIA and another a news report of the fall of RCIT to see for yourself the value behind their work.

Receiving Schools for RCIT Students

Would You Like a Side of Co-op With That?

PCTIA Media Release - RCIT Closure

In chapter 17, Brookfield brought up some interesting points regarding students who are resistant to learning, and understanding their reasons for behaving or responding the way they do.

The video above touches on a number of things that Brookfield discusses, and introduces numerous ways on how to motivate these adult learners to bring out their best in the classroom. Jasmine Gomez does a great job on her video, and Moovly looks like an excellent little tool for creating future animated videos such as this one.