Daffodil International University
Faculty of Science and Information Technology => Software Engineering => Topic started by: Nazia Nishat on April 20, 2017, 03:05:59 AM
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The book “Emotions, Learning, and the Brain: Exploring the Educational Implications of Affective Neuroscience” by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang (2016) has much to offer in regards to this practice. According to Dr. Immordino-Yang, it is “literally neurobiologically impossible to think deeply about things that you don't care about” (Lahey 2016). This is true even for subjects that are considered unemotional, such as physics, engineering, and math – deep understanding still depends on making emotional connections between concepts (Immordino-Yang 2016). Unfortunately, the powerful relationship between emotion and learning is often underestimated and overlooked, especially in the higher education classroom. So how can we help our students become emotionally invested in the material?
One idea is to begin class with engaging, real-world applications of the topic that spark students’ interest and hook them into wanting to know more (Inductive teaching approach, see Prince and Felder 2007). These applications could take a variety of forms, such as recent news stories, demonstrations, video clips, interviews with experts in the field, newly developed products, or historical developments and perspectives, to name a few. Work on making the emotional connection first, and then teach them the underlying theory. Often times, however, teachers take the opposite approach (Deductive teaching approach). We start class with the theory and work our way toward the applications – thinking, perhaps, that the students will understand and appreciate the applications more once they are grounded in the theory. This is typically not the case. Perhaps the most effective strategy would be to sandwich the theory between real-world applications. A related idea is to introduce a real-world problem to the class before delving into the nuts and bolts of how to solve it. This approach, termed generation, gets the students curious about the problem, as well as the tools they will need to solve it.
link:http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1541-4329.12109/full