Bringing transformative changes in my class for deep learning

The first year of teaching online was challenging and there were moments when I felt like a failure but along with it, there were also a lot of opportunities to learn and grow myself personally and professionally. Towards the end of last academic year, I spent some time reflecting on my classroom practices and how I could make a greater impact in this new academic year. While exploring some learning ideas on the internet, I came across this four weeks’ course on edx titled ‘Deep Learning through Transformative Pedagogy’. I signed up for it and although it took me more than four weeks to complete the course, not because the course was not planned well but because I had other commitments that sidelined the course, I am so excited to share what I have learned from this course with you all. 

While waiting for my final grades, I thought I would write this post because there is no better way to learn than through peer teaching. In this blog post, I will summarize some of the key learning concepts and some useful classroom practices that promote deep learning.

To start with, deep learning is associated with higher order skills, it encourages critical thinking, and it is more student centered. It also states that the effectiveness of active learning is not limited to the academic or cognitive but extends to social and personal development. It does not completely reject the notion of surface learning. Whilst surface learning is more centered on ideas, contents, knowledge and information, deep learning extends to building connections between these ideas and information. Below are some key learning concepts that I have been integrating in my lesson plans from this course:

Fear Based Learning v/s Thriving Learning: The first module of the course sheds some light on neuroscientific contributions to understanding human learning. Apparently, we learn something very quickly when fear is activated to survive. It may be quick and long-term, but it is more of a surface learning. Deep learning happens when there are neural connections and when we can see consequences, benefits applied in different environment. Unless we feel safe, we cannot develop thriving learning. Deep Learning gets inhibited when survival is at stake. Also, adding fun to the lesson enhances learning because there is no fear.

My ultimate takeaway from this module is to add a fun factor to my plan and reduce the fear factor which I intend to achieve through informal, casual conversations in between or by integrating something interesting for everyone in the plan and by ensuring that every student is in a ready to learn state.

Classroom discourse: The second module of the course focuses on the importance of communication skills in deep learning. As teachers, we need to ask ourselves if we are setting a positive example of effective communication skill. Are we talking more and listening less? Do we provide ample opportunities in class for dialogues and social interaction? Does the communication in class promote reasoning and problem-solving skills? Do we provide a safe space to our students to share their ideas critically and constructively and reach a consensus?

These days, I encourage my students to talk and share their views without any fear of being mocked by their friends or by me. I urge them to ask challenging questions and interrogate others, and to always justify their positions and not just put a statement without any accountability to its reasoning. Recently, we had a very fruitful discussion on how Hindu rituals require family members to mourn a death in the family by avoiding salt and giving up on all comforts for a certain period. I shared an article that talked about how Ujjwal Thapa’s wife mourned for his death and together as a class, we discussed the death rituals of Hinduism and that I believe was one of the most overwhelming conversations I have had with my students in a long time.

Are our students motivated enough? The third module of the course goes into the detail of how to motivate students, how to retain students’ motivation and how do we know if a learner is motivated. 

I know that a lot of students in our classroom struggle either because of the emotional state they are in or because their social relationship with their peers is not very positive which ultimately leads them to having a very low self esteem resulting in poor performance and participation in class. It is very important for students to have a sense of belongingness for them to be motivated.

Another very crucial factor in motivating students is having a positive teacher-student relationship. According to Julie Bower, when the classroom is characterized by emotionally engaged teachers, there is much greater chance that students will be actively engaged, and deep learning will take place.

The Feedback Loop: This module was eye-opening for me. We often hear how important giving and receiving feedback is but what I seemed to have missed out on is how important well thought, timely and effective feedback is.

In this module, John Hattie emphasizes on how it is so important to clearly set expectations and standards for learners. Hattie also mentions how he keeps exemplary works of his past students to show to the new students. The other very interesting idea that has stuck with me from this module is how, so often, we give feedback after the learning period is over, mostly after a summative assessment or when students no longer have an opportunity to go back and correct their mistakes. Hattie stresses on the importance of fostering practices to develop self- assessment and peer assessment.

Lately, I have been trying to allow my students to see the works of their friends and I clearly set expectations with my students so that they know what is good and what needs improvement and how they can assess their own work.

My only intention of writing this blog is to share what I have learnt with fellow teachers and to keep it as a journal for me to read in future. This post does not in any way sum up the entire course and its four modules, but I hope it gives you a general idea of what the course is about and how it has helped me as a teacher. My plan is to revise the course again in the future and maybe some other key concepts will stand out as more important to me then and I shall share it when that happens again.

_{Lastly, if there's anything that you want to discuss more on from some of the concepts I have shared in this blog, feel free to leave a comment or write me an email.}