In this assignment, students engaged in activities to help them connect concepts between assignments and classes. These activities, inspired by James Lang’sSmall Teaching,were designed to be adaptable for use in other classes.Author: Kim Freeman, Continuing Lecturer in College Writing ProgramsGrant Type: Lecturer Teaching Fellows Program (LTF)Assignment Details: Small Teaching for Transfer |
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From the author: "Many of us work hard to scaffold our assignments so that students build skills and knowledge from one assignment or module to the next. Moreover, the main aim of education is to provide students with a foundation for subsequent classes and the world beyond school. In pedagogy, we call these connections “transfer.” However, many students struggle to connect ideas from one class to another or to other areas outside of class; they sometimes have trouble from one assignment to the next. Further, as instructors, we can’t just show students the connections. The students have to make them for themselves. That is how they build the necessary neuronal networks. Thus, my goal for LTF this year was to come up with activities that explicitly encourage transfer that I could use not only in my classes but that would be adaptable by other faculty in their classes, too. To start, I used James Lang’s Small Teaching, focusing on his activities that emphasized transfer, as well as coming up with a few of my own."