In my online classroom, I’ve gradually been making the shift toward student-centered learning. Last night I received assignments from students who had participated in a lesson that was completely oriented to active student learning and the results were heart-warming and very encouraging!
The main principles of student-centered learning are that
• Student involvement and participation are necessary for learning
• The student has responsibility for learning
• The teacher acts as facilitator for learning
In this modality, the teacher facilitates the students’ learning toward certain prescribed outcomes. Teachers help students set achievable goals for learning, assess their own learning, discover their own learning styles, and determine how to exploit available resources for learning. Students will acquire effective study and investigation skills that will be valuable throughout their lives.
I think every teacher has had the experience of watching a student falling asleep while listening to a lecture in a face-to-face classroom. We already know that learning is not happening with a sleepy or sleeping student! The antidote is activity and student-centered learning is ACTIVE learning and there is learning happening when a student is active and engaged.
In the lesson that I was receiving assignments for last night, I COULD have given the students the information. But instead I chose to set it up so that they would be able to find the information and share it with each other. Thus, the peer process worked to provide learning to the whole group. Moreover, the students were very excited about this work and showed much more enthusiasm than was shown in previous lessons when I provided the information. My guess is that they will remember this information for a long time but most happily, will have the tools for finding similar information in the future, which is really what being well-educated is all about.
