TPI Results

I’m not a teacher and never taught online/face-to-face in a formal setting, but the teaching perspective profile definitely revealed some interesting results that definitely make sense to me.

My dominant scoring categories are Nurturing (Effective teaching assumes that long-term, hard, persistent effort to achieve comes from the heart, not the head) and Apprenticeship (Effective teaching is a process of socializing students into new behavioral norms and ways of working), both tied at 37. I agree that Nurturing is my highest score because even when I tutored high school students as a big-sib in college, I was told that I encouraged their efforts while supporting them to try their very best. When a teacher helps the student feel capable and confidence, this will serve as a safe home base from which the student can continue learning. As a student myself, I am most motivated and productive when I feel like my learning efforts are supported by my teacher and he/she really cares about my well-being and learning needs. Once students can trust you as a teacher, it’s easier for them to make progress and achieve their learning goals.

My other scores are quite similar to each other, around 30-32 which probably means that most of the perspectives are equally important to me. My back-up perspectives are Transmission (Effective teaching requires a substantial commitment to the content or subject matter) and Developmental (Effective teaching must be planned and conducted 'from the learner's point of view). I often used real-world, concrete examples that are meaningful to the student to “bridge knowledge” and help illustrate mathematical concepts when I taught math so students can be able to transfer their new-found knowledge to other, related problems. I found that this strategy worked because the students were more likely to work hard when they focus on topics that they feel are worthwhile and relevant. Lastly, my recessive perspective is Social Reform (Effective teaching seeks to change society in substantive ways).

I think TPI results should be the same for face-to-face because their teaching style and values should be the same in any setting.

Week 4 Reflection

This week, in reviewing various excellent examples of instruction design, I was impressed by the high-quality online content that these online schools can offer. For example, FVS’s science class was interesting, interactive (between both student-student and student-teacher) and included many multimedia modes to deliver content. Students are allowed to explore science through everyday examples that can help them learn better to actively apply the knowledge when it comes to real world situations. Students acquire and retain information most effectively when material is relevant and presented in the context of real-life events and situations. They want to know how the concepts and principles they are learning affect them and often search for meaning by making connections between what they are learning in school and their own realities outside of the (virtual) classroom. Educators/course designers should make sure these real-life situations/goals are age appropriate and relevant to the knowledge of the learner group with attention to achieve the maximum effect.

Also, this is my first time learning about wet labs/virtual labs and I find this concept really innovative as it provides student with a complete set of genuine lab experience and students actually go into real world and collect data to write their reports. The multimedia modes allow students to also work on their own pace, referring to various lessons if they needed reinforcements or skip/advance to lessons if they want. Students are also forced to get creative in solving problems (or work collaboratively with partners) once the lab is started since the instructor is not physically there in the middle of the experiment.

Week 3 Reflection

I definitely learned a lot about online schools than I did the first week. Online schools are much advanced, wide-spread, and well-operated than I expected!

Tweet: If I were Choosing an Online School for my Child....

I just realized that I was one of the few that tweeted 140+ words instead of characters :P

so...here I go again. If I were choosing an online school for my child, I'll make sure the instructors are experienced with online education and there is good teacher-student communication and interaction!

If I was a student, I'd like to try interesting courses and have fun!