The Changing Student Calls for a Change in Focus

One of the shifts that has occurred during my 25-year teaching tenure, and is even now still evolving, is the shift from an emphasis on teaching and the instructor to a focus on learning. The discussion prompt: “We should not be concerned with students who are not responsive or bored with traditional teaching methods” is certainly a throw back to that earlier paradigm.

While the “learning-centered” shift is certainly bombarding us now with a deluge of “buzz-words,” at its core is a fundamental belief that it is primarily the work of instructors to create learning environments which not only make it possible for students to learn but actually maximize their ability to do so.

I think it may be unrealistic to say that all students can learn, all things, at all times. However, if I reach such a conclusion about a particular student before I have provided options for learning and assessment which allow that student the ability to achieve and demonstrate that learning, I have fallen short of my goals and teaching values. Students, with their differing learning styles and experiences, may not be responsive to “my method,” probably fashioned after “my learning style,” but they may respond with creative genius in another mode.

Now I admit that this has been, and continues to be, a real challenge for me as a long-standing biology lecturer. However, I think that one of the things I have found so inviting and stimulating about teaching online is that the experience challenges me to find new ways to facilitate student learning and new ways for students to demonstrate their learning. After all, even as a “skilled” lecturer, I don’t want to be a “talking online head.”