The educational institutions bend by reducing the number of and variety of items on progress evaluations and on exams. They also throw out the teaching of important textbook chapters at times. In the end, this "dumbing down" of the curriculum hurts all facets of society.
Researchers in
- Student engagement dropped considerably lower when students spent 90% of their time doing seatwork"
- "Students were actively engaged in learning 84 percent of the time during teacher led activities but only 70 percent of the time during seatwork
- Seatwork and students working alone was the dominant activity pattern in classrooms studied -- 66% in reading and 75% in math
In short, students who simply go home to study (spending 100% of their time in seatwork) on their own instead of being engaged in a classroom by their instructors and their peers lose focus and become disengaged. For this very reason, many "highly effective teachers [around the world] use interactive presentations with modeling, questions and answers, guided practice, and constructive feedback before students work independently. It is also interesting to note that high student engagement during teacher-led instruction and group work yielded high engagement during independent seatwork."
According to
Note: "Computer game makers use
this same research concept. They create captivating games designed with
advancing levels of difficulty so that even novice players, intrigued by the
challenge, and can "find the ring' or "enter the magic door' frequently enough
to maintain their interest. For the teacher, striking the balance
between challenge and success in the classroom is more demanding and complex
than any game, particularly with a heterogeneous group of students."
Finally, in order, "[to]deliver lessons designed to maximize academic learning time, teachers must:
- "accurately diagnose each student's knowledge and skill level
- prescribe learning tasks appropriate to a student's levels
- structure engaging lessons around the learning tasks and give clear, concise task directions
- have substantive teacher-student interaction during the lesson, such as: modeling, guiding students as they practice, asking probing questions, giving corrective feedback"
SELF-DESTRUCTION OF LEARNING
Depressingly, in Omani colleges we often have abysmal attendance levels running to students missing sometimes well over 30% of their classes, i.e. opportunities to experience time-on-task activities.
How can instructors be able to diagnose
students' knowledge and skill level in any timely manner with such lack-of-attendance?
In
addition, without being able to diagnose in a timely manner, how can lecturers or teachers then accurately (and in a timely manner) "prescribe the learning tasks appropriate
to a student's level"?
Moreover,
with many students coming to class 5, 10
or 15 minutes late, how can such-students
(quickly) comprehend the concisely
presented directions for each task, i.e. without disrupting the others who
arrived on time?
Finally,
with such poor attendance and through continual tardiness, how can many students observe good behaviors or understand what is
being modeled and practiced? Likewise,
how can probing questions and
discussions be followed up regularly?
Tragically, attendance is most lacking at times in the semester when attendance is needed most.
For example, attendance is lowest during the first two weeks of each terms, i.e. the period when an instructor is trying to diagnose and set up or model a host of effective, motivating, and efficient tasks. It is during this period that the course's pace needs to be set, and this pace can be a very motivating one if large amount and variety of group-, pair- and individual activities are introduced.
However, if students do not allow themselves to get into the rhythm of a course until later in the term, a great deal of quality time spent practicing is lost. Moreover, rigidity and bad behaviors have already been modeled by that time, too, as students demand "less comprehensible input" the later they show up for the term.
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