Welcome to this Global Challenges for Business Instructor Blog. Please feel free to use the space to discuss any ideas you have regarding how we teach the Skills Workshops and Topic Seminars. It is also a place to share experiences of teaching and a point of general discussion between the instructors of the course. It is set to private and only those I have invited should have access.
Kind Regards
Sara D
Kind Regards
Sara D
Hi ship mates, good to meet you all today.
ReplyDeleteSharing this wee website after our mental health chat today. There is lots of research that shows the link with excess phone use and depression. http://humanetech.com/
and a growing number of people realigning phones to counteract push design technology . The take control section on the site offers ideas to reduce phone addiction which urgency in design brings. It may help students/us concentrate more and it sort of ties in with our human and technology disruption discussions.
Talking about phones... also stumbled upon an interesting programme on bbc4 on landfill. Apparently parts for mobile phones are estimated to run out within 20 years. This programme looked at a landfill site in Dunbar and how metal detection is a cheaper option that mining. https://ciwm-journal.co.uk/viridor-helps-to-change-perceptions-of-landfill-with-bbc-four/
Just thought it was an interesting wee thing given our need for mobiles for everything.
Have a great week
Susan
We talked about using models to analyse, come to conclusions and frame analysis
ReplyDeleteThe one I mentioned was Lewin's force field model (google for an image) sorry couldn't seem to attach anything here. This model is typically used in change management, I like because it is easy to understand and to use quickly on a flip. It can be adapted to think about a variety of different stakeholders views or for a product, a market, an industry a country etc. The change/disruption is in the centre and it can be used to identify the biggest most important drivers and restraints and to decide which are of lesser importance. It can help to start to form a view on whether their are more restraints than drivers and it can also be quite powerful if two different groups come together to report back their findings on two different perspectives. It can also help frame conclusions and show why you came to that decision.
S
Susan,
DeleteNice thought here. I would also recommend the standard models used in management: SWOT; PESTEL, etc. as they are also easy.
My view is, anything that gets the students to structure their thinking would be good. Many will already have done this but perhaps be reluctant to bring these to the table in a seminar as being "unworthy". We somehow have to make it clear that all ideas have merit.
Susan,
DeleteSo far haven't figured out how to upload pictures, etc. I'm sure it is possible as I read blogs with these on blogspot :-)
Hi,
DeleteI have been reviewing last year's material and came across these "modelling" behaviours I found from an article from my teaching emails:
• Assertive – the teacher has a strong personality, is independent, competitive, and forceful
• Responsive – the teacher has compassion, is helpful, sincere, friendly, and sensitive to student needs
• Clear – the teacher presents content in ways that students can understand, answers questions, has clear course objectives
• Relevant – the teacher uses examples, explanations, and exercises that make the course content relevant to students’ careers and personal goals
• Competent – the teacher is a content expert, intelligent, and knows how to teach
• Trustworthy – the teacher is honest, genuine, and abides by ethical standards
• Caring – the teacher cares about students, understands them, and has their best interests at heart
• Immediate – the teacher’s nonverbal behaviuors are expressive; the teacher smiles, nods, uses gestures, makes eye contact, and doesn’t speak in a monotone
• Humorous – the teacher uses humour frequently
• Discloses – the teacher reveals an appropriate amount of personal information when it’s relevant to the topic
Worth a discussion?
And another teaching matters entry here (and I'm going to be very naughty and reproduce the whole post below since it's about thinking about critical thinking:
DeleteTeaching Critical Thinking Some Practical Points
By: Linda B. Nilson, PhD
We all endorse it and we all want our students to do it. We also claim to teach it. “It” is critical thinking, and very few of us actually teach it or even understand what it is (Paul & Elder, 2013). Research tells us that our students learn critical thinking only after we receive training in how to teach it and design our courses explicitly and intentionally to foster critical thinking skills (Abrami, Bernard, Borokhovski, Wade, Surkes, Tamim, & Zhang, 2008). We have to start by formulating assessable critical thinking learning outcomes and building our courses around them.
It is little wonder we don’t understand what critical thinking is. The literature around it is abstract and fragmented among several different scholars or scholarly teams who work in their own silos and don’t build on or even cite each other. Still, we can find some common ground among them. While each has a different definition of critical thinking, they all agree that it involves the cognitive operations of interpretation and/or analysis, often followed by evaluation. They also concur that students have to critically think about something, which means students have to learn how to do it in a discipline-based course. Another point of agreement is how difficult it is to do; it goes against our natural tendency to want to perceive selectively and confirm what we already “know” to be true. Therefore, critical thinking involves character as well as cognition. Students must be inclined to pursue “truth” over their own biases, persist through challenges, assess their own thinking fairly, and abandon mistaken reasoning for new and more valid ways of thinking. These intellectual “virtues” don’t come easily or naturally.
Critical thinking scholars also agree that questions are central to students acquiring critical thinking skills. We must ask students challenging, open-ended questions that demand genuine inquiry, analysis, or assessment—questions like these:
• What is your interpretation/analysis of this passage/data/argument?
• What are your reasons for favouring that interpretation/analysis? What is your evidence?
• How well does your interpretation/analysis handle the complexities of the passage/data/argument?
• What is another interpretation/analysis of the passage/data/argument? Any others?
• What are the implications of each interpretation/analysis?
• Let’s look at all the interpretations/analyses and evaluate them. How strong is the evidence for each one?
• How honestly and impartially are you representing the other interpretations/analyses? Do you have a vested interest in one interpretation/analysis over another?
• What additional information would help us to narrow down our interpretations/analyses?
I had to split the article due to word length constraints :-) ...
DeleteThese are just a few examples of the kinds of questions that require your students to engage in critical thinking. After giving an answer, students must also 1) describe how they arrived at their answer to develop their metacognitive awareness of their reasoning and 2) get feedback on their responses—from you, a teaching assistant, another expert, or their peers—so they can correct or refine their thinking accordingly.
Some teaching methods naturally promote inquiry, analysis, and assessment, and all of them are student-active (Abrami et al., 2008). Class discussion may be the strongest, and it includes the debriefings of complex cases, simulations, and role plays. However, debates, structured controversy, targeted journaling, inquiry-guided labs, and POGIL-type worksheets are also effective. All of these learning experiences can arouse students’ curiosity, stimulate their questions, and induce them to explain and justify their arguments.
Finally, we need to remember that instructors are role models. Students need to see us showing the courage to question our own opinions and values, the fair-mindedness to represent multiple perspectives accurately, and the open-mindedness to entertain viewpoints opposed to our own. When we do this, we should let students know that we are practicing critical thinking.
Two faculty members, Mel Seesholtz and Brian Polk, illustrate these qualities during their regularly scheduled debates in their course, Religion in American Life. The latter is a noted critic of dogma-based organized religion and the former, a college chaplain. While sincerely trying to forward their viewpoint, they consciously model critical thinking, civil discourse, and the complementary dispositions for their class (Seesholtz & Polk, 2009). They demonstrate that the stormy wars of words so common in today’s political mass media do not represent the only way to disagree. If students don’t see the thoughtful, respectful alternative, how will they be able to peacefully co-exist with one another in this diverse world?
References
Abrami, P. C., Bernard, R. M., Borokhovski, E., Wade, A., Surkes, M. A., Tamim, R., & Zhang, D. (2008). Instructional interventions affecting critical thinking skills and dispositions: A stage 1 meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 78(4), 1102-1134.
Paul, R., & Elder, L. (2013). Study of 38 public universities and 28 private universities to determine faculty emphasis on critical thinking in instruction. Available at http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/study-of-38-public-universities-and-28-private-universities-to-determine-faculty-emphasis-on-critical-thinking-in-instruction/598
Seesholtz, M., & Polk, B. (2009, October 10). Two professors, one valuable lesson: How to respectfully disagree. Chronicle of Higher Education. Available at http://chronicle.com/article/Two-Professors-One-Valuable/48901/