“If we take man as he is, we make him worse,
Viktor Frankl
but if we take him as he should be,
we make him capable of becoming what he can be.”
The great psychoanalyst, Viktor Frankl, observed that treating someone as if they were better than they are would lead to far greater outcomes for their life than if we simply view them as they currently are. Your power as an educator to shape and encourage the lives of your students is immeasurable! Think of one student who needs to be seen as they can become this month and help them along in their goals for a meaningful, hope-filled life.
Upcoming Events
Because the month of May is busy with graduation, we will not be holding any OTL webinar with special topics other than our Canvas Q & A session.
- Friday May 14th at 10:45 am: Canvas Q & A
- Tuesday May 18th: Deadline for requesting Summer 2021 Canvas Courses
Watch: April's Webinar
Did you miss April's webinar about classroom management? It was phenomenal! We had guest speaker Amanda Burton share her ideas and philosophy around creating a positive classroom. Some highlights include:
- Creating a classroom brand
- Sources of student misbehavior
- Addressing misbehavior in the right ways
- Celebrating the small wins
To watch, please enroll in the Bridge course.
Learning Science Spotlight: Guided Discovery vs Direct Instruction
Guided discovery is a method of teaching that emphasizes students discovering information for themselves through questions, problems, or scenarios posed by an instructor. Traditional direct instruction is a teacher telling students what they need to know (like lectures or other presentation methods).
Research has shown that for high school students and adults, it is important to let them think for themselves through guided discovery rather than constantly having information fed to them. One caveat is: the students need to have some working knowledge in the subject area before using guided discovery. So use guided discovery after your students have learned some fundamentals.
Let's say there's an important topic in your class that students seem to struggle with understanding when they take a final exam or certification test. Think about that topic and how you might present it in a guided approach rather than direct instruction. You could give students a scenario to contemplate and ask them questions about it to help them discover the information rather than give it directly to them.
If you'd like to learn more, the Learning Scientists blog had a great article about guided discovery research. Contact the Office of Teaching and Learning if you want help developing lesson plans using this approach! We are happy to help.
Canvas Feature Spotlight: Canvas Beta and Annotations
In this Canvas Feature Spotlight, I show how to navigate to mtec.beta.instruture.com and showcase a new "Student Annotation" assignment submission type for submitting worksheets.