Week 3 Reflection

Sunday, October 22, 2023

Warmly welcome to my week 3 reflection. Numerous intriguing and informative things happened this week. During the lecture, Dr. Lina first did a recap session on the dialogic pattern that we learned last week and then we were nominated to share our thoughts according to different groups that Dr. Lina assigned. I heard and learned a lot from this sharing session and I also was called to share my thoughts. When I stood in front of our classmates, I was thinking about what I was supposed to say because I am too shy to share and for that reason, I made full preparation on the topic. But when I was called to share, my topic was changed to the comments. At that time, my brain had been blank and I was speechless. Why when it was my turn, the topic was changed. Never mind, I comforted myself in my heart and started to share my ideas. Hopefully, everything went well and I also successfully shared my thoughts.

After that, Dr. Lina explained evidence-based teaching strategies, especially for the top six teaching strategies including cooperative learning, interactive teaching, graphic organizer, reciprocal teaching, assessment for learning, and manipulative (the order is based on the ranking). I felt excited and interested because I could acquire more refreshing knowledge but I also felt a sense of anxiety as I met new groupmates according to the Jigsaw learning strategy. Then we were assigned different work and new groups. Actually, there was nothing to worry about because all of my groupmates were awfully friendly, and we had a hot discussion on assessment for learning. When it came to group presentation in the tutorial session, I was totally at a loss because I joined another group (that group had not enough people and my m classmate called me to join...). In that case, I had to join two group presentations but I felt delighted because I could practice my spoken English which is a weakness for me. Surprisingly, we all did well (I meant two groups both performed perfectly).

Interactive teaching VS cooperative teaching

When I make the comparison between the original curriculum that Dr. Lina designed based on the interactive teaching strategy and the tutorial this week that solely emphasizes cooperative learning through hands-on activities, I find that interactive teaching is more engaging, intriguing, and informative for three reasons including active learning, immediate feedback, and critical thinking (If our class applied interactive teaching and we had used these slides for this tutorial, I thought most students could actively participate in discussion and our comprehension of the top six teaching strategies would be enhanced as well).

Active learning

Interactive teaching strategy emphasizes active participation and engagement between students and teachers in the learning process, where students are encouraged to proactively engage with the course through activities (eg. asking questions, providing answers, and engaging in discussion) rather than passively receiving information. According to Bonwell & Eison (1991), the interactive teaching strategy was demonstrated to enhance active learning through increased engagement, enhanced retention, application of knowledge, and collaboration and communication.

Besides, one research conducted by Prince (2004) demonstrated that the utilization of interactive teaching strategies such as classroom discussion, group activities, and problem-solving exercises, results in enhanced retention and comprehension of the material, which fosters student's active learning as well. While applying the cooperative teaching strategy that focuses on teamwork, communication skills, and interpersonal development in the classroom, students are not aroused to be proactive learners, and it easily leads to some situations (eg. students talk with classmates about others instead of topic, students do other things rather than discussing with classmates about their group work and so on...). The finding of Boling & Robinson (1999) suggested that the interactive group compared with the cooperative group exhibited a higher level of satisfaction with the learning activities. Based on the above, the interactive teaching strategy is compared to be more engaging.

Immediate feedback

Interactive teaching allows for immediate feedback through teachers' mediation, which is important to foster students' progress. According to Guo (2022), teachers' mediation is needed for students before they can become independent and effective learners. Teachers give feedback to students through mediation and the feedback can not only help students to identify misconceptions and areas where they need to improve and work on but also provide extra information to foster the ability of self-study as well as critical thinking. Studies have shown that immediate feedback has a positive influence on student's learning and performance (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). hence, if our tutorial applied the interactive teaching strategy, our class would be more engaging and informative. On the contrary, in the class based on the cooperative teaching strategy, students learn from each other and it is hard to get accurate and timely feedback due to the various levels of ability, which can not further enhance students' overall development.

Critical thinking

Interactive teaching strategy contains a lot of activities such as classroom discussions, problem-solving exercises, and Socratic questioning that enhance students' critical thinking. Take the Socratic questioning as an example. Socratic questioning provides a series of open-ended questions to stimulate students' critical thinking and interests beyond the topic, which improves student's ability to think critically as well as explore more (eg. Dr. Lina let us think about our feelings about the interactive teaching we used to apply and the cooperative teaching we applied in the tutorial). According to Hook(2010), students were guided to think critically and explore deeper levels of comprehension through a series of open-ended questions.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Interactive teaching strategy focuses on active participation and engagement while the cooperative teaching strategy emphasizes teamwork or working together. When it comes to situations that require in-depth thinking, critical thinking, or students with varying levels of prior knowledge, it is imperative to utilize interactive teaching. When it comes to situations that emphasize teamwork, communication skills, or others, it is important to use the cooperative teaching strategy. We should utilize these two teaching strategies according to the different situations and goals we want to achieve. For our tutorial, it is more intriguing and engaging to utilize the interactive teaching strategy, which enhances engagement and critical thinking about our topic.

(nearly at the end of our tutorial)

Jigsaw

Previous experience with Jigsaw

In the beginning, I was so confused because it was quite different from the last experience (we used to take one lecture based on Jigsaw, and this lecture was

conducted by Dr. Chu. Previously, we were provided with pre-reading and divided into 6 groups with different numbers from 1 to 6, If I did not remember correctly. For example, If I was in group 1, all of my groupmates were labeled with 1. When reassigning groups, each group contained numbers from 1 to 6. This was the first experience of the lecture based on Jigsaw). Eventually, Dr. Lina clearly explained it to us, and we all started our Jigsaw group activity.

Constructivism and MKO

During the Jigsaw session, we were active participants in the learning process and we constructed our own comprehension through interaction with others, which fits into the construction theory as well. One research conducted by Freeman et al. (2014) that, active learning methods resulted in higher academic outcomes and lower failure rates compared with traditional lectures. In addition, it also reminded me of the concept named MKO (I mentioned it in reflection of week 1). We could learn from the more
knowledgeable others in our group through interactions, which further enhance comprehension.

Social Identity theory

This also reminded me of another theory I learned from Yutong's blog. When we were divided into different groups, we had to assign different roles (eg. timer keeper, managers, and so on...) as well as consider diversity, inclusivity, and intergroup
relations. Henri & John (2004) claimed that social identity theory created inclusive classroom climates of respecting and celebrating diverse identities to enhance students' sense of belonging. Subsequently, we should respect each other to create a friendly environment for further development.

Multimodality

After reading the article that Dr. Lina provided to us, I gained a lot of new knowledge. For example, multimodality refers to the utilization of diverse communication channels or models that an individual uses to effectively convey meaning (Kessler, 2022). On the contrary, monomodality refers to communications or expressions solely depending on a single mode. This reminded me of the experience of our Jigsaw session. During the presentation, most groups only relied on one single mode which is talking while compared with presentations based on multimodality is less effective. Despite the paucity of research on the impact of multimodality, one research conducted by Vandommele et al. (2017) found that in collaborative multimodal writing assignments, participants outperformed a control group in various aspects including perceived communicative effectiveness, lexical diversity, text length, and other measures. Another research conducted by Xu (2021) showed the experimental group in digital multimodal composing (DMS) significantly surpassed the control group in five aspects of L2 writing involving text length, mean length per unit, task requirement, content, and comprehension. Consequently, we as future educators or future teachers should carefully consider and be aware of ways in which to incorporate multimodality into practice as Kessler suggested in the article.

Lastly, one takeaway I've learned from these two sessions is to find my own learning style. Each learning style has its own advantages and weaknesses. However, the most important is to find our own learning style that is the most suitable and useful for us. Only in this way, can we achieve faster and more comprehensive development and better utilize knowledge that we learned to help students in the future.

Thank you with the most sincerity and utmost gravity for seeing my blog.

I hope you can learn something from my blog even though it only is a reflection.

May every day be a good day for you! (´｡• ω •｡`)

Reference List：

Bonwell, C. C., & Eison, J. A. (1991)l Active Learning: Creating Excitement in the Classroom. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report No. 1. Washington, DC: George Washington University.

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED336049.pdf

Bolin, N. C., & Robinson, D. H. (1999). Individual study, interactive multimedia, or cooperative learning: Which activity best supplements lecture-based distance education? Journal of Educational Psychology, 91(1), 169-174.

https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.91.1.169

Freeman, S., Eddy, S. L., McDonough, M., Smith, M. K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H., & Wenderoth, M. P. (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(23), 8410-8415.

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1319030111

Hooks, B. (2010). Teaching critical thinking: Practical wisdom. New York: Routledge.

Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81-112.

https://doi.org/10.3102/003465430298487

Henri, T. & John, T. C. (2004). The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behavior. In J. T. Jost & J. Sidanius (Eds.), Political psychology: Key reading, 276-293.

https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.4324/9780203505984-16

Kessler, M. (2022). Multimodality. ELT Journal.

http://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:260527920

Lina, G. (2020). Teacher's mediation in students' development of cognition and metacognition. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 50(5), 458-473.

https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2020.1846158

Prince, M. (2004). Does active learning work? A review of the research. Journal of Engineering Education, 93(3), 223-231.

https://www.engr.ncsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/drive/1smSpn4AiHSh8z7a0MHDBwhb_JhcoLQmI/2004-Prince_AL.pdf

Vandommele, G., Branden, K.V., Gorp, K., & Maeyer, S. D. (2017). In-school and out-of-school multimodal writing as an L2 writing resource for beginner learners of Dutch. Journal of Second Language Writing,36, 23-36.

https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:64855491

Xu, Y. (2021). Investigating the effects of digital multimodal composing on Chinese EFL learners' writing performance: a quasi-experimental study. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 36, 785-805.

https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:237671845

{ 1 comments... read them below or add one }

lina's blogOctober 29, 2023 at 3:42 AM
Dear Shiwei
Thanks very much for the efforts.
"Warmly welcome to my week 3 reflection." I like your starting sentence of the Blog. Very engaging for your readers.
It meets my expectation.
Marked
Keep shining!
Best wishes
Lina
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