TITLE: Shut Up.  Better Yet, Ask a Question.
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: September 23, 2008  6:53 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
On the way out of class today, I ran into the colleague who
teaches in the room after me.  I apologized for being slow
to get out of the room and told him that I had talked more
than usual today.  From the looks on the faces of my students,
I gathered that they needed a bit more.  What they really
needed was more time with same material.  Most of all, they
needed me to slow down -- rather than cover more material,
they needed a chance to think more about what they had just
learned.  My way of doing that was to keep talking about
the current example.

I told my colleague that there is probably a
<A HREF="http://www.pedagogicalpatterns.org/">
   pedagogical pattern</A>
called <STRONG>Shut Up</STRONG>.  And if not, then maybe there
should be.

He said that the real pattern is <STRONG>Ask a Question</STRONG>.

I bowed down to him.

We talked a bit more, about how we both desire to use the
<STRONG>Ask a Question</STRONG> pattern more often.  We
don't, out of habit and out of convenience.  Professors
lecture.  It's what we do.  The easiest thing to do is
almost always: just keep talking, saying what I had planned
to say.

I give myself some credit for how I ended class today.
At the very least, I realized that I should not introduce
new material.  I was able to <STRONG>Let the Plan Go</STRONG>
[1]

Better than sticking to a plan that is off track for my
students is to keep talking, but about same stuff, only
in a different way.  This can sometimes be good.  It gives
me a chance to show students another side of the same
idea, so that they might understand the idea better by
seeing it from different perspectives.

Is <STRONG>Shut Up</STRONG> better than that?  Sometimes.
There are times when students just need... time -- time
for the idea to sink in, time to process.

Is <STRONG>Ask a Question</STRONG> better still?  Yes,
in most cases.  Even if I show students an idea, rather
than telling them something, they remain largely passive
in the process.  Asking a question <EM>engages</EM> them
in the idea.  More and different parts of their brain can
go to work.  Most everything we know about how people
learn says that this is A Good Thing.

Now, I do give myself a little credit here, too.  I know
about the
<A HREF="http://csis.pace.edu/~bergin/patterns/fewpedpats.html#as">
   Active Student</A>
pattern [2] and have changed my habits slowly over time.
I try to toss in a question for students every now and
then, if only to shut myself up for a while.  But my
holding pattern today probably didn't use enough questions.
I was under time pressure (class is almost over!) and
didn't have the presence of mind to turn the last few
minutes into an exercise.  I hope to do better next time.

~~~~~

[1] You can read the <STRONG>Let the Plan Go</STRONG>
pattern in
<A HREF="http://www.voelter.de/data/pub/tp/tp.pdf">
   Seminars</A>,
an ambitious pattern language by Astrid Fricke and
Markus V&ouml;lter.  

[2] The
<A HREF="http://csis.pace.edu/~bergin/patterns/fewpedpats.html#as">
   Active Student</A>
pattern is documented in
<A HREF="http://csis.pace.edu/~bergin/">
   Joe Bergin</A>'s
paper "Some Pedagogical Patterns".  There is a lot of
good stuff in this one!
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