Educational Philosophy

Anyone applying for any teaching job has written, rewritten and changed their Ed Philosophy often as most applications include one.  Throughout my years of teaching K-12 I have written quite a few.  I most often speak in my ed phil doc about my connection with the students through my history and often share my thoughts on how we as educators must be there for our students in and outside of the classroom.  The most critical aspect of my teaching and my ed philosophy is the aspect that I understand or try to understand where the students are as I have been there. I give them an idea of my trials and successes and how to continuously move forward in their educational and experiences through life.

While in the Coast Guard I began taking distance education courses, and moved onto classroom environments and online environments.  While most of my undergrad courses were on campus, about half of my graduate courses were online or mixed method courses.  While I have enjoyed all methods, I do appreciate in classroom learning still the best. Not only for my experiences with other students and face to face learning, but as a teacher or in the professor collegiate role as well.  There is nothing better than having those in classroom discussions that delve into the methods and the theories with your students. While I enjoy online learning, I am very grateful for the time I have with my students in the classroom as well as the residencies with Walden.  I need that face to face time with students as well as peers.

Thank you for reading my blogs, till next time,

Cassie

New Technologies

New Technologies

Every new semester in my collegiate classroom, I introduce the online library database system associated with the college in which I teach.  My students in quite a few of my classes have to write or perform some sort of research paper in my class or other classes so I bring this in early.  While college students are savvy in the ways of technology and their abilities to access such information, they are still very reluctant to utilize the online databases.  While this is a tool that all college students should be comfortable with, I do make the learning process fun and show them how easy it can be. I show the students not only how to access the databases, find the appropriate database to find the information, but also show them how to narrow down their searches. I do this while utilizing a smart board and make sort of a game out of the whole class.  

Most students are reluctant at first and groan when they have to do any research. I show them how to find information online through these databases, but when I show them how easy it is to grab an article, download it to their system for later and how to utilize the APA citation tool it becomes really simple.  I break it down to simple steps and how to build their APA reference page as well.  It's amazing that the papers that come in after I show them this lesson how clean they are in APA formatting and style. What used to be reluctant researchers are now eager students happy to get A's in their other courses on their large research papers. 

In reference to the below table, I am utilizing the Perceptual arousal method, with showing how to get their attention on using this tool.  I repeat the lesson a few times during the session to show familarity of the databases, and give them motivational tools during the lesson to show how this can help them not just in this class but in their entire educational process.

Throughout the lesson I stress this is a requirement (confidence) for all papers, and outline how successful their other papers will be if they use this type of tool, and modify and build from a template that I provide.  The satisfaction these students receive after turning in their first paper not only in my course but other courses, and seeing how much less work it was to utilize the databases is very rewarding. 

Table 1 derived from Keller, 1987.

Table 1 ARCS Categories

Attention	Relevance	Confidence	Satisfaction
A1 Perceptual arousal A2 Inquiry arousal A3 Variability	R1 Goal orientation R2 Motive matching R3 Familiarity	C1 Learning requirements C2 Success opportunities C3 Personal control	S1 Intrinsic reinforcement S2 Extrinsic rewards S3 Equity

Keller, J. M. (1987). Development and use of the ARCS model of motivational design.Journal of Instructional Development, 10(3), 2 – 10.