[Xmca-l] Re: Request for advice

Sun Jan 3 23:35:19 PST 2016

David, my argument for "group work" was solely that such 
contact hours would be conducted in the students' and 
tutors' native language. It was meant as a kind of 
compromise, allowing the university to present an 
English-only face to the world via textbooks, curriculum 
material, large lectures and (hopefully) audiorecordings of 
lectures, all of which can be rehearsed and revisited, while 
the "real" education is happening in face-to-face contact 
between the lecturer/tutor and the student. I think the idea 
someone mentioned of using students or postgrads who have 
good English skills to assist at this point was a good one, too.
We had a great discussion about the point you are making 
when we were discussing mathematics education a year or so ago.
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
On 4/01/2016 6:19 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
> A number of discussants have made the suggestion of small groups,
> tutorials, peer presentations, and so on, and this is an excellent
> suggestion. But we need know—and be able to explain—exactly why it is
> excellent, in what this excellence consists of, and what the limitations of
> the excellence are, because we often do find that in situations like the
> one which Helena is describing (situations like the ones where I have spent
> the last three and a half decades teaching), when we try to introduce small
> groups, tutorials, and peer presentations that we’ve only multiplied the
> problems that we started with and sometimes even exacerbated them. For if
> the professor has only a minimal grasp of English, and if the students find
> it almost impossible to have a conversation about the topic even when the
> professor is prompting them, we have to ask what the effect of removing or
> sidelining or backgrounding the professor will be. Many students feel—and
> the evidence is that they are not entirely wrong—that the effect is to
> remove or to background the only source of English and the main source of
> conceptual knowledge.
>
> The argument has to be taken seriously, for at least three reasons. First
> of all, as I said, there’s a lot of evidence that shows that although the
> professor undoubtedly feels a great deal of relief that his or her poor
> grasp of English is no longer the centre of the student’s critical
> attention, all that’s really been accomplished is to move the centre of
> attention to a student who in some cases bears it even less well than the
> professor did. Often the results of small groups are not noticeably better
> than the results of teacher fronted classes, except in “skills based”
> classes which offer practice to learners, e.g. conversation classes, and in
> the case of conceptual knowledge based classes the results are sometimes
> dramatically worse. In fact, Hywel Coleman’s large scale studies in Nigeria
> showed that there really wasn’t any particular advantage for small classes
> over large classes, given highly motivated students (and the autodidacts
> amongst us can easily see why this might be).
>
> Secondly, even if there were no objective evidence on the side of large
> classes and against groupwork, there is an important subjective argument.
> Many learners, right or wrong, feel they learn better from a professor than
> from their peers, just as we sometimes feel that we learn better from our
> peers than from ourselves (or our children). This subjective argument is
> particularly important because I think one reason why groupwork and peer
> seminar have such clout with us is that, unlike Professor Silverstein, we
> are more interested in empowering our learners than merely informing them,
> yet again, of the ways they are disempowered. The argument that groupwork
> and peer seminars are right because they empower learners appears to be
> unanswerable—but suppose the learners use this power to call for the return
> of large professor led classes? The argument is, once again, unanswerable,
> and I think it shows the dangers of confusing issues that are pedagogical
> (and therefore social, political) with issues that are ethical (and
> therefore interpersonal, moral). The personal is NOT political; they are
> two very different, if linked, levels of being.
> But thirdly I think the argument in favor of large classes deserves to be
> taken seriously because it will help us get beneath the surface and find
> out what it is about small classes that is pedagogically more effective. It
> is certainly not the case that all small classes are pedagogically
> effective nor is it the case that large classes never are. Is it SIMPLY an
> aesthetic-political preference, that small is beautiful? Is it once again
> something we all favor for the convenience of the instructor rather than
> for the comfort of the student? Or is there something about the shape of
> actual discourse that we should be attending to, not least because it might
> be transferable to larger classes? Does this mysterious factor, having to
> do with the shape of actual discourse, apply equally to so-called “content”
> subjects, where the emphasis is on what Vygotsky calls “science concepts”
> and to everyday conversation classes?
>
> (But...I am well over Helena's one screen limit, and I feel the cold clammy
> hand of her hook on my throat....)
>
> David Kellogg
> Macquarie University
>
> On Mon, Jan 4, 2016 at 10:14 AM, Helena Worthen <helenaworthen@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hmm, this will take me some research to check out. Thank you, Michael -
>>
>>   However, I was given a Cross-Cultural leadership class to teach (in
>> English) that drew from a syllabus placed online by an MIT professor. I
>> said yes just to see what it would be like. It was a skimpy syllabus that
>> relied heavily on the kind of student who would show up in a MIT class
>> (multi-national and academically skilled) and the readings were mostly from
>> Amazon; you got a button to click and buy. I was told that the instructor's
>> lecture notes were all on line but what was actually on line was something
>> he probably wrote in an hour.
>>
>> I had to re-write the class, of course.
>>
>> Helena Worthen
>> helenaworthen@gmail.com
>> Vietnam blog: helenaworthen.wordpress.com
>>
>> On Jan 3, 2016, at 9:26 PM, Glassman, Michael wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Helena,
>>>
>>> There is a possibility that your university is attempting to follow the
>> Open Educational Resource model that is being promoted by UNESCO (that is
>> just a guess).  Are they using OpenCourseware, which started at MIT, where
>> major universities post their curriculum and some related resources in
>> their native language (mostly at this point in English?)  A number of
>> universities similar to yours are attempting to follow this model.  However
>> UNESCO itself recognizes the problem that you describe.  There is a second
>> part to the OER movement which involves Learning Objects.  These are
>> locally developed, much smaller approaches to teaching - even taking parts
>> of OpenCourseware and experimenting with them in local classrooms and then
>> posting them to share and in the best possible worlds discuss with other
>> universities in Learning Object Repositories.   African Virtual University
>> is a good model for this.  You can make one an argument that the university
>> can achieve the type of recognition is requires by developing a Learning
>> Objects Repository for Southeast Asia.
>>> Michael
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: xmca-l-bounces+mglassman=ehe.ohio-state.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu
>> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces+mglassman=ehe.ohio-state.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu] On
>> Behalf Of Helena Worthen
>>> Sent: Saturday, January 02, 2016 11:39 PM
>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Request for advice
>>>
>>> Thank you, Elinami.
>>>
>>> H
>>>
>>> Helena Worthen
>>> helenaworthen@gmail.com
>>> Vietnam blog: helenaworthen.wordpress.com
>>>
>>> On Jan 3, 2016, at 11:32 AM, Elinami Swai wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear Helena.
>>>> Your dilemma resonates with what we are experiencing in Tanzania. As a
>>>> post colonial country, we have been grappling with the issue of
>>>> language of instruction for a very long time. Our education system has
>>>> been jogging between Kiswahili and English and for a long time we had
>>>> settled on Kiswahili for all the subjects in elementary level (primary
>>>> 1-7) and English for secondary  to university level.
>>>>
>>>> Talk of silences in classrooms. Here and there you could hear a sound
>>>> of broken English from the teachers. The end product of such a process
>>>> does not need to be described here.
>>>>
>>>> Of recent, the new policy has granted the use of both languages
>>>> (Kiswahili and English).
>>>>
>>>> In your case, think of code-switching and code-mixing. Another
>>>> strategy is team teaching (check Stanford University).
>>>>
>>>> Kind Regards,
>>>>
>>>> Elinami
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 03/01/2016, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu> wrote:
>>>>> Helena,
>>>>>
>>>>> Is it possible to ignite their imaginations around the concept of a
>> seminar?
>>>>> Or dare I say, peer-learning / study groups?
>>>>>
>>>>> Vera devised the peer-exam, which is really cool, how about that?
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't think peer-exam technically qualifies as an "Ivy-League method"
>>>>> (though it certainly is innovative), but it's peer-led learning, and
>>>>> that may be useful for overcoming the obstacles you and your teachers
>> face?
>>>>> So those are my (naive) pieces of broccoli and spinach for your
>>>>> Vietnamese noodle soup.
>>>>>
>>>>> Kind regards,
>>>>>
>>>>> Annalisa
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Dr. Elinami Swai
>>>> Senior Lecturer
>>>> Associate Dean
>>>> Coordinator, Postgraduate Studies
>>>> Faculty of Education
>>>> Open University of Tanzania
>>>> P.O.Box 23409
>>>> Dar-Es-Salaam
>>>> Tell:255-022-2668992/2668820/2668445/26687455
>>>> Fax:022-2668759
>>>> Cell: (255) 076-722-8353; (255) 068-722-8353
>>>> http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Womens-Empowerment-Africa-Dislocation/dp/
>>>> 0230102484
>>>>        ...this faith will still deliver
>>>>        If you live it first to last
>>>>        Not everything which blooms must
>>>>        wither.
>>>>        Not all that was is past
>>>
>>>
>>
>>