Learning or Telling.. From Sage on the stage to Guide on the Side.

Teaching is an art of getting students to learn. As teachers, we should be making students able to learn and in an effective manner. In times of Online classes or Non F2F, it is even crucial to engage our students so that they learn to think, to do things, and participate actively in their learning journey.

What I have done in past 3 semesters at Meiji university and even my years of teaching at UTM, was Telling. During the past 3 semesters, I insisted that students put their camera on (compulsory), as I Talk, Tell, Explain, Teach, Narrate, show calculations using the textbook slides and occasionally relevant YouTube videos. With all these efforts, I noticed that I am still unable to get all of them engaged in discussions. I am also seeing one or two people non paying attention especially when I ask questions (the classes are postgrads and small group less than 15). It is not really effective, students learn but passively listening and occasionally responding when I asked questions.

Starting this semester, Fall 2021, I have started to change and experiment on engaging students and improvised the way I teach. I am now doing a lot of facilitating and guiding. For the five classes that I have conducted till today, ( each class runs for 1 hr 30 mins), I prepared a different set of slides with many questions, empty spaces to be filled up, which I will type and save, to get them involved and active. I have used the Poll in Zoom to give a few questions each time I run my classes. I have used the Breakout Rooms for group Problem Solving. I have also got students to build up answers using laddering technique. I video record almost the sessions and shared with them after class. I have also shared the slides that was used in classes, in the hope that they can refer and look up when needed.

I am still very new in making my classes more engaging and less Telling, more Facilitating then Teaching. Moving from ‘Sage on the Stage’ towards ‘Guide on the Side’. All these can only happened with the motivation and knowledge gained from Professor Christopher Stillwell’s of UC Irvine during the September’s EMI-UCI Meiji training program held online.

YOU CAN WATCH MY VIDEOS AT SHARI YUSOF YouTube channel and give suggestions for my own improvement.

Domo arigato gozaimasu.