8/8/2019 To Teach, Perchance to Learn...

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To teach, perchance to learn…

Bill Pelz

Professor of PsychologyCoordinator: Internet Academy

Herkimer County Community College

Ask the next professor you pass in the hall this question: “Did you learn more { insert 

appropriate academic discipline here} as a student or as a teacher? I predict that many will

respond with the second option, and suspect that those who tell you that they learned more as astudent had skilled teachers who ALLOWED them to learn.

Classes aren’t Glasses! Learning is teacher-centered when the teacher acts like a pitcher and

“pours” or pushes knowledge into her or his students (the glasses.) I think this still happens in

some college and university classrooms a lot, and I see it as pretty ineffective for many adultlearners most of the time. Online classes in which the majority of the content is provided by the

professor are the asynchronous close cousin to this classroom approach.

Student Teaching! Google “teaching presence.” This idea has hit a nerve with online

educators. It’s not the same thing as “teacher presence” - though both are important factors for

creating a successful online learning environment. Adult students have the ability, and the

desire, to add high quality teaching presence to any college level course. The professor has toALLOW them the opportunity to do so, and then orchestrate the process skillfully. How great

would it be if every student in a class added significant teaching presence to the class –

everybody teaching each other and everybody learning from each other – is that nirvana! Theprofessor provides the necessary tools and initial training (critical thinking skills, discussion

facilitation techniques, effective questions) and the student teachers do the rest!

Radical Andragogy: Malcolm Knowles suggested back in the ‘70’s that adults learn best when

they are self-directed. Adult learning apparently thrives as a pull process – where the learner

obtains relevant knowledge from the environment experientially. This is a student-centered

philosophy. To the extent possible, shouldn’t professors offering online classes for adultlearners adopt androgogically appropriate strategies to maximize their student’s learning

opportunities? One such strategy – I call it “Student Led Discussions” - has at its core a simple

and logical three step approach to take advantage of each adult student’s propensity to pulllearning from the environment: read / question / discuss. The ‘radical’ feature is that the

students play the major role in deciding what to read, which questions to ask and answer, and

then they, not the professor, facilitate the discussions.

What’s the catch? Here is the catch. When students are responsible for determining at least

some of the course content, and then teaching it to each other, and it really isn’t the professor’s

 job to “pour” all of the knowledge, then the professor’s “responsibility to the discipline” may becalled into question. To what extent can students be permitted to determine what they read,

what questions they discuss, and in general what they learn? Can (insert undergraduate,

community college, ESL, “my” etc.) students ask good questions and facilitate productivediscussions? These are important issues that need to be understood and discussed. I now have

about 10 years of online teaching experience with a diverse array of courses and students. I

have rarely been disappointed with the choices my students made or the results they achieved.