Understanding Student Understanding (Part 2)

• What did you learn about understanding student understanding? I have learned that we can use interviewing to understand student understanding.  Students' answers on tests don't always demonstrate their true level of understanding.  Oftentimes, students understand more than their answers on their exams because they are limited to answer what they have memorized or taught to know.  The interview’s goal is not to quiz the students but rather to use as an approach to dig deeper into the levels of students' understanding.

• How might you apply the audio technology in your classrooom? I can use the audio technology by recording life testimonials of our adult students who have been through the hard times of finding jobs after being out of work due to our tough economic times. These students are from our school’s career programs and can talk about how their struggles and challenges motivated them to go back to school and learn more skills for job placement. These audio recordings will be turned to podcasts and will be posted on our website.  These podcasts will become a collection of stories that will uplift and move listeners who have the same life experiences.

• What did you learn about the kind of learning experiences that will move students toward deeper understanding?  The kind of learning experiences that can move students toward deeper understanding are the ones that can stimulate cognitive thinking and can generate knowledge and skills that are transferable for practical learning.  Through these
  learning experiences (like project-based applied learning approach), students acquire the logical reasoning and competence
  to understand how to apply the concepts, lessons, or projects to more meaningful or useful tasks to produce significant learning outcomes.  

• Is there a feasible way to provide these experiences in the traditional classroom? Absolutely!  I think it should be a must in a traditional classroom.  Examples on how to provide these learning experiences would be: problem solving using real-world and practical scenarios for students to solve; hands-on projects through the use simulated environment, and role playing.