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2.10 Discussion Board IV: Connections (Required to earn certificate)
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Posted by CUNY Mindset Initiative on March 11, 2024 at 10:57 am
đź’¬ Discussion:
- In your course(s), how can you assist students in connecting the course content to their current & future personal lives?
- How will students connect what they care about to what they are learning?
- How will they actively engage in the process of making these connections?
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Whenever I’ve taught freshman composition and business writing courses, it was easy to let students take the lead in making the connection between course goals and their personal goals because I allowed students maximum freedom to choose what they wrote about. I had very few problems with plagiarism in the research papers because students chose subjects they wanted to learn more about. I was especially proud of my business writing courses because students spent the semester building a portfolio with different kinds of business writing (everything from letters of introduction to a full-fledge proposal) in pursuit of (perhaps theoretically) solving a problem at their jobs, in their neighborhoods, or even on campus.
In my course on musical theatre, students are allowed to choose between an essay (in which personal reflections are permitted) and a mini-research paper (which is more strictly academic in nature, so anecdotal evidence is less likely to be relevant unless the student is referring to something that happened at a live performance). Both the opening essay and the closing paper ask students to explain their definitions of “real” Americans; in the closing paper, they must use at least three examples from the musicals studied to explain how those shows challenged or affirmed their original views.
Hi Denise,
It’s great when students take advantage of the opportunity to work on something that interests them. You can see the passion in the writing when they care about the topic. And plagiarism is less of an issue because students don’t want to copy an assignment from elsewhere when it’s meaningful to them to investigate and discover it.
In the musical theatre course, do you find students leaning toward one choice over the other? Which would you “rather” they do in terms of their own personal and intellectual development?The strategies shared here are truly inspiring and highlight a variety of approaches to help students connect course content to their personal and future lives. This discussion not only showcases innovative teaching methods but also reflects a deep understanding of how to engage students in meaningful learning experiences.
Each of these contributions exemplifies the importance of making learning relevant to students’ lives. By doing so, educators not only enhance students’ academic success but also their motivation, engagement, and satisfaction with the learning process.
Thanks for sharing, Deborah! I looked through the site briefly and will definitely read more!
The idea is to have students create a “Response to Inspiration”- that is asking students to think about what they are most “passionate about” and having them try to think about ways this passion connects to the academic learning activity
I can help students connect the course content with their lives by giving an assignment in which they must find a creative way to implement what they are learning in their current and future personal lives. For example, if they are learning about time management, I could ask them to present their current daily schedule. Then I would ask them to reflect on what changes they could make to improve their time management, based on what they have learnt. Also, I will ask them to think about scenarios in their future careers in which they could apply what they are learning, making their experience in class more relevant. The student can actively engage in the process of making connections by encourage them to reflect and journal about their own time management and how they have been managing themself so far, and what positive changes they have experienced ever since they have been practicing time management.Â
That sounds really fun, Victoria. Is there a particular module in your psych course where you think this activity would be most useful?
As an academic support coordinator, you must get a lot of questions from students about the relevance of what they’re learning in their course work. It’s great that you’re adding these exercises to your tool box! I’m wondering when you think this type of activity might be introduced to students- as a faculty member myself, the valuable work you do often goes on “behind the scenes” to us, and we need to know more about it!
@dsingh – Having taught critical thinking and also explored some ungrading strategies, your post caught my eye. How do students generally do? Do they struggle finding some connections (which I struggle with myself sometimes) and if so, how do you guide them?
One variation I tried in the past was finding fallacies in social media posts or song lyrics. It was fun to see what students found but quite hard at the same time to make those connections.
For my cultural diversity/western civilization (humanities) course last semester, students had the option each week of posting to a padlet a link to a “21st century” connection to the reading from their own lives. This could be a link to a movie, TV show, famous figure, news article, etc.
So, for example, if we were reading about Socrates, they might post about a modern-day equivalent figure. I learned a lot and, most importantly, students were interested in talking about the posts in class discussions!
(image done with ChatGPT)
I generally model how approaches from my discipline can be used to address real-world problems, and I solicit additional examples from students based on issues they care about. Throughout the semester, I use reflection assignments and discussion activities to get students to make connections between course content and other areas of their lives. I also give students opportunities to lead discussions and give presentations on relevant topics of interest to them that might not be covered in the course.
Hi Simanique,
I think real-world problems is such an important (and often missing!) way to engage students. When our courses address issues that matter to students–and they’re asked to engage in thinking about, analyzing, researching, and maybe even problem-solving, their current and future selves are often fully engaged. I love that you follow this up with reflective writing, offering them an opportunity to stop and consider their work and responses. How do you frame those reflections? Do you find that reflection is a way to encourage learning mindset in ways that are particularly useful to your course or discipline?
Hi Casandra,
I love this! What did they come up with?
Hi Victoria,
I love this idea! Can you tell us more about how students use their inspiration to motivate themselves and others in the course?
- Since I am teaching Computer Science classes, which might get quite technical at times, I always try to find a story or analogy of a principle we learn in class that will, in easier terms, explain why that CS principle is so important. Example: In the Workstation Programming course that I instructed in Spring 2024, we learned that computers that do vectored input/output operations (that is, transferring data in large batches at once) are more time-efficient than linear/regular input/output operations (transferring 1 piece of data at a time). To explain why, I created illustrations showing a real-life analogy that shows the significance of vectored I/O over linear I/O.The definition of vectored I/O is at https://www.sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~briskman/cisc/3350/lecture_notes/topic_06/02.html (you may disregard the technicalities) and the illustrations are taken from https://www.sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~briskman/cisc/3350/lecture_notes/topic_06/03.html and https://www.sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~briskman/cisc/3350/lecture_notes/topic_06/04.html: “Consider the route of some school bus in the morning: having the school bus pick up the kids from their homes, and, only after all the kids are on the bus, driving to the school is going to be considerably faster than picking up one kid, driving to the school and dropping the kid off at the school, picking up the next kid, and then driving to the school again, etc.”
- Since Computer Science, besides being technical at times, is also quite relevant and useful, even for those who aren’t pursuing a career directly related to Computer Science, students can associate some of the principles we study in class with their own practices and computer usage patterns. For example, the usefulness of a multi-tasking computer can be explained as follows: “Imagine you want to play a game on your computer (through an installed game application,) and, at the same time, listen to your favorite music (playing through a browser). If your computer isn’t capable of multitasking, this means you’ll need to choose which of the activities to do: either play a game or listen to music, but not both, since your computer is only capable of running one application/program at a time! However, if you have a computer with a multi-tasking operating system, you can do several activities at a time!” Using this sort of description of the idea of a multi-tasking operating system, a student will right away picture themselves in the described situation and mentally experience the challenge that the description mentions, therefore connecting the principle of multi-tasking to their personal life!
- To reinforce this approach of creating analogies, many homework questions I give to my students ask them to come up with and depict, in their own words, a real-life analogy that describes a specific concept we studied in class, and, using the analogy, describe why the concept is crucial or what significant effect it has on that area of computer science or a user’s experience of using a computer. I always enjoy reading the creative responses that students write and the various scenarios they illustrate, thereby showing that they deeply thought about the given concept and understood it!
- Since I am teaching Computer Science classes, which might get quite technical at times, I always try to find a story or analogy of a principle we learn in class that will, in easier terms, explain why that CS principle is so important. Example: In the Workstation Programming course that I instructed in Spring 2024, we learned that computers that do vectored input/output operations (that is, transferring data in large batches at once) are more time-efficient than linear/regular input/output operations (transferring 1 piece of data at a time). To explain why, I created illustrations showing a real-life analogy that shows the significance of vectored I/O over linear I/O.The definition of vectored I/O is at https://www.sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~briskman/cisc/3350/lecture_notes/topic_06/02.html (you may disregard the technicalities) and the illustrations are taken from https://www.sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~briskman/cisc/3350/lecture_notes/topic_06/03.html and https://www.sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~briskman/cisc/3350/lecture_notes/topic_06/04.html: “Consider the route of some school bus in the morning: having the school bus pick up the kids from their homes, and, only after all the kids are on the bus, driving to the school is going to be considerably faster than picking up one kid, driving to the school and dropping the kid off at the school, picking up the next kid, and then driving to the school again, etc.”
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