Dive Brief:
- In a contributed piece for eSchool News, educational technology consultant Alan November urges K-12 teachers to embrace three strategies for effective teaching exemplified by Harvard professor David Malan, who teaches a popular computer science course.
- Malan pays close attention to the social experience his students have in class, creating opportunities for them to solve problems together, and he emphasizes self-assessment among students, who benefit from being asked to reflect on their own learning.
- By giving students a public venue to present their work solving real-world problems, November says Malan also inspires students to break out of a mentality to do only as much as necessary to get an A.
Dive Insight:
The idea of presenting students with real-world problems has factored into the growing popularity of project-based learning. In these scenarios, students are motivated and engaged by the clear relevance of their projects, and they also benefit from having some control over the project topic they work on.
When it comes to getting girls interested in science, technology, engineering and math, teachers have also found presenting students with real-world problems to solve gets female students more engaged than they otherwise might be. Simply emphasizing that scientists and engineers solve community problems can work to engage more girls in STEM fields.