All Posts

This week’s reading discussed digital pedagogy and the future of education that includes the digital world.  One of the most interesting aspects to me about the digital classroom is the accessibility aspect. The accessibility allows for students of different age groups and income groups to have access to a higher education. However, is this good …

Continue reading “Week 10 (Digital Pedagogy)”

Case-based and problem-based learning are instructional approaches that encourage active learning and promote for a mindful teaching experience to be used in higher education. The motivation behind both methods is to challenge students with open-ended problems or real-life cases  to promote critical thinking and problem-solving abilities. By being exposed to new scenarios, student work in … Continue reading Active learning Strategies

Digital pedagogy is the study and use of digital technologies in teaching and learning. Some people will misunderstand the digital pedagogy and online teaching. During this pandemic, most of teaching activities are moved online and the online teaching is not equal to the digital pedagogy. On the contrary, I would view digital pedagogy as aContinue reading “GRAD 5114 Post 4: Digital Pedagogy”

 This week the readings focused on case, problem, and project-based learning. These three pedagogical approaches are all examples of ways to actively engage students in a classroom and there is a large amount of literature that focuses on these ap…

I really enjoyed this week’s readings, as they got to the heart of why we should be teachers in the first place. In particular, I was drawn to Freire’s Teaching as a human act article. Something I have always believed is that teachers should be able to communicate their passion for the subject they are …

Continue reading “Critical Pedagogy”

 I was mulling over the readings and videos from this week’s focus on inclusive pedagogy and I was struggling to decide how to go about writing this blog. Why? I wasn’t sure how brave I wanted to be.I have the privilege of being white-passing and …

For this week’s blog post on case-based pedagogy, I decided to review a case related to my study area to see what this type of pedagogy would look like in Forestry. I found a case on oak clearcutting provided by the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science. A link to this case can …

Continue reading “Blog Post 3: Case-Based Pedagogy”

If everybody blindly conforms to some role pushed upon them and accepts whatever narrative that is thrown their way, there would not be enough motivation for anyone to push the boundaries of science and philosophy. Living in a world that … Continue reading →

I compare myself a lot to other people. That was the environment I grew up in. In Malaysia,  rankings of students after a big strings of exams were posted on the board for all to see. You, your friends, your peers, your teachers, your parents, and everyone in the school WILL know where you rank …

Continue reading “Not to Compare, I Remind Myself”

“The climate of respect that is born of just, serious, humble, and generous relationships, in which both the authority of the teacher and the freedom of the students are ethically grounded, is what converts pedagogical space into authentic educational experience.” – Freire (1998). For this week’s blog post, I decided to summarize points that resonated […]

I was quite interested in the idea introduced by Arao and Clemens that instructors should move from “safe spaces” to “brave spaces.” Of course, this type of terminology has a specific usage that points to student affairs programming contexts. However, I do believe that the conversation around safety and controversy is relevant to the typesContinue reading “Inclusive Pedagogy”

I have never really reflected on this idea of “who I want to be in the classroom”. I was raised to be a very empathetic person, but still, hold the structure in everything I do. I think that’s what I want to take with me. I think it is important to be able to place …

Continue reading “Blog Post 1 – Discovering your authentic teaching self”

If not all educators are called to be pedagogues, then how do we hold (or expect to hold) educator’s accountable for sound pedagogical practices in a global environment where everyone is barely treading water? On the flip side of this coin (as if it’s really a coin), is the question of where the collaboration exists […]

Education is not always an easy process. Learning a skill or studying requires constant improvement of one’s current knowledge/skill. Studying…

This week’s readings concern an issue I continuously grapple with, which is how to create a space for cultivating critical thinking and, simultaneously, how to make it inclusive for all students. I want to put into conversation Brian Arao and Kristi Clemens reflections on the problems with safe spaces with Paulo Freire’s provocation that there …

Continue reading “What Constitutes the ‘Classroom’?”

I get to design and teach an online course for Spring 2021 for my Graduate Assistantship. I will teach a Pathways course, Educating Exceptional Learners, so I will have undergraduate students from various majors. I hope to motivate students to…

Read more →

If not all educators are called to be pedagogues, then how do we hold (or expect to hold) educator’s accountable for sound pedagogical practices in a global environment where everyone is barely treading water? On the flip side of this coin (as if it’s really a coin), is the question of where the collaboration existsContinue reading “Digital Pedagogy”

“Banking” Education, as described by Paulo Freire, is the education system model where students are seen as containers of knowledge while professors work towards filling those containers with the knowledge they consider appropriate to fit in. In that sense, students’ abilities to accumulate a larger amount of knowledge at a faster pace and without questioningContinue reading ““Banking” Education, MOOCs and Online Learning”

I begin this post by recognizing that I have been the recipient of far fewer microaggressions than the majority people in this country. As a white male raised in the southern U.S., the most common microaggression directed at me is … Continue reading →

The idea problem-based pedagogy (PBL) is an idea that needs to be practiced more in all rungs of education. PBL has been described as a learning style that utilizes real world problems and solutions as teaching tools. For example if a teacher wanted to teach a student about engineering, a real world problem such as …

Continue reading “Week 8 (Problem (Case)-Based Pedagogy)”

The readings this week felt eerily relevant after the tumult of last week’s election. All year, I have been thinking about the sins of omission committed by the leaders of our country. It has been exhausting (and frankly, disgusting) to watch these men repeatedly respond to various insidious statements, decisions, and policies of our president […]

This week’s readings got me thinking a lot about a workshop I conducted a few years ago. The workshop focused on identity and culture – the idea was to get first-year students to understand their identity and how they can work with other people who may have identities that are different from their own. Discussion […]

I am a teacher but I had limited training on how to be a teacher. I have taught several times in the past and I am currently teaching a large undergraduate biochemistry course. I am passionate about teaching and I make sure to put my heart and effort in every single one of my course …

Continue reading “Being critical of my teaching”

I think we have a fundamental problem in education. Much of this problem comes down to one fundamental idea: the misalignment between how we teach and how students learn. If you were to choose a random class on campus and walk into one of the lectures, chances are you would find the instructor standing at […]

If not all educators are called to be pedagogues, then how do we hold (or expect to hold) educator’s accountable for sound pedagogical practices in a global environment where everyone is barely treading water? On the flip side of this coin (as if it’s really a coin), is the question of where the collaboration existsContinue reading “Digital Pedagogy Group Post”

The first article I read this week was by Tauber (2013), in which they consider the future of online education. One point worth considering is the idea of personalization as a tool to facilitate student engagement digitally. For instance, massive open online courses (MOOC) are becoming increasingly popular among adults who want to learn a […]

The greatest enemy in teaching is boredom. Sitting and listening, sitting and reading, sitting and pretty much anything – these are all generally boring activities. And when you’re bored, your mind wanders away from what it’s supposed to be learning. Yet this is the most common and certainly the easiest way to teach. I’m no …

Continue reading “Discovering your teaching self”

It was interesting, both through the readings and through class discussion, to consider the usage of laptops/cell phones in class. During undergrad, I used both laptops and cell phones for both helpful (i.e. looking up things, taking notes) and hurtful

Inclusivity is vital more now than ever. A learning environment should be a safe space. My intent as an educator is to create a learning environment characterized by a positive outlook. I, too, am concerned about our world and our society, and am deeply disturbed by what I see. However, I have made the personal … Continue reading How To Adopt Inclusive Pedagogy?

I love the idea of case-based pedagogy as a style of learning. Too often have I sat in a college class and wondered the relevancy of the material to the real world. Case studies allow students to connect what’s going on in their lives to their education, and ultimately get the most out of the …

Continue reading “Case-Based Pedagogy”

Paulo Freire is a fascinating thinker of education. One of his enormously helpful preoccupations is with the question of power. This concern, of power, has reframed the entire body of discourse about education from moral and scientific to that of power and governance. However, drawing my inspiration from Freire’s text this week, let me ruminate […]

As I think about the nature of this topic, I immediately recognize the emphasis on the ‘self.’ This introspective analysis seems to be all about me as a teacher. Questions to be asked are ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What is … Continue reading →

While reading on problem based learning, the idea of real world problem solving within the classroom is incredibly valuable to students. Sure, these are just college kids right now, but the end goal is for them to enter the workforce with abilities that would allow for a more informed decision making process based off of …

Continue reading “Problem Based Learning & Case Pedagogy”

For this week’s blog, the focus is to reflect on the topic of inclusive pedagogy. As sophisticated this term is as complicated this conce…

A Collaborative Blog Post Anaid Shaver, KJ Chew, Rifat Sabbir Mansur, Sam Salous, Zhenyu Yao (in alphabetical order) “We did not know it was different from online teaching. We are not sure what digital pedagogy is.” These were some of the opening statements we had in the group. Our discussion revolved around interpreting what “digitalContinue reading “What is Digital Pedagogy?”

While I was reading the article of Ladson-Billings about culturally responsive teaching, the reaction of teachers to her advice made me think: what is good teaching? Culturally responsible teaching is good teaching, but is it “just good teaching”? Is good teaching equivalent to culturally relevant teaching? Does culturally relevant teaching require more than “just good teaching”? […]

The year 2020 has been rather interesting in the grand scheme of education. With a global pandemic on the rise,…

Society, by common definition, is the aggregate of people living together for a particular purpose. A society also follows customs…

This week’s readings on inclusive pedagogy provided excellent practices for creating an inclusive teaching environment that fosters positive, long-term values of openness and acceptance of others beliefs and ideas. Arao and Clemens’ article “From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces” resonated with me personally, as I was a part of the activity described in the article’sContinue reading “Incorporating Brave Spaces Into Teaching”

I will start off by saying how insightful and painful it was to read Decoding Digital Pedagogy. This isn’t because wither Stommel or Morris were reproachful of those generations of educators thrust into digital learning environments, but moreso their apt, yet scathing, review of the misconceptions surrounding the nuance of digital pedagogy. And I willContinue reading “The Handfasting of Education and the Digital”

This blog post is a collaboration between myself and Emily Burns, Jonilda Bahja, Logan Perry, and HokieInstructor.  In a post from Hybrid Pedagogy, author Sean Michael Morris writes that “just as the pedagogue will enter a room and rearrange the tables and chairs to suit his purpose, so too will the digital pedagogue happily hack …

Continue reading “Collaborative Post!”

Like Sarah Deel, I also came from a liberal arts college that put a strong emphasis on teaching. In fact, it was the impact my professors had on me as such great teachers that led me to want to become part of academia. In a letter I wrote during my sen…

As a teacher, I pride myself on loving what I do. Draider’s (2002) article resonated with me, stating that some teachers find what they want to do at a young age. For most of my young life, I thought I wanted to be a journalist. However, it turns out that I was always the one …

Continue reading “Influential Figures: Educators.”

The Trial and Error of Digital Pedagogy Group post by Chris Clements, Austin Garren, Jazmin Jurkiewicz, Andrew Knight, Malle Schilling, and Brittany Shaughnessy What do we mean by digital pedagogy? Digital pedagogy presents a unique set of issues that one may not think of when first stepping foot in the classroom. Digital pedagogy hosts a …

Continue reading “Digital Pedagogy (Group Post)”

This week’s topic resonates well with me.  It talks about Inclusive pedagogy which focuses more on the constant reflection of how to make our learning environments places that are not only safe for diverse individuals but also places where issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion are at the uppermost importance. However, its hard to achieve […]

In the last two weeks of class, we have been discussing culturally responsive teaching and inclusive pedagogy. I must say that my biggest take-away from this content is that I still have a LOT to learn. The following paragraphs discuss some of the points I found particularly interesting from our discussions and readings. I really […]

Group post by Chris Clements, Austin Garren, Jazmin Jurkiewicz, Andrew Knight, Malle Schilling, and Brittany Shaughnessy What do we mean by digital pedagogy? Digital pedagogy presents a unique set of issues that one may not think of when first stepping foot in the classroom. Digital pedagogy hosts a myriad of definitions for different people. As …

Continue reading “The Trial and Error of Digital Pedagogy”

I think this week’s readings challenged me a bit. I’ve always enjoyed teaching and knew it was something I wanted to do professionally. I enjoy interacting with students, and to me, teaching feels like a way that I can make an impact on the lives of others. That being said, I’ve spent a lot of […]

Paulo Freire’s vision for education is certainly compelling. Freire writes that too many teachers try to put themselves on a pedestal of invincibility from which they gaze arrogantly down on students. Many teachers assume that their job is to pass down information to students in a purely replicatory, rather than critical way. In this view,Continue reading “Critical Pedagogy”

The readings this week, like many readings I have encountered over the years, confirmed my opinions on our education systems. The systems that see students as consumers and “to be taught”. The systems that aim to “process” these students to make sure they have a role in this society. The systems that constantly reproducing the …

Continue reading “Realizing Critical Pedagogies”