Class: SY and TY B. Tech. IT
Prepared By: Prof. Dadaso T. Mane, Assistant Professor, IT Department
In today’s world, traditional teaching is losing its impact during classroom teaching. Students get lazy after 20-25 minutes in an hour lecture and it makes difficult to teacher to control a class of 60 students. It is the need of the time, to use innovative teaching learning techniques to make lectures interesting.
These techniques should promote independent, critical and creative thinking among students. Also, increase student’s interest in lecture, motivation and performance in examination.
The following techniques were used during lectures such as: concept map, think-pair-share, discussion forum, case studies, problem based learning (PBL) and surprise test. These techniques are suitable for SY and TY B. Tech. classes, especially.
- Concept Map: A concept map is a type of graphic organizer used to help students organize and represent knowledge of a subject. Concept maps begin with a main idea (or concept) and then branch out to show how that main idea can be broken down into specific topics. This technique is useful when students want to revise their studies during the examination.
2. Think-Pair-Share (TPS):
To engage students during class, Think-pair-share activity is one of the best activities. It is the simple and easy activity to be implemented.
In this activity, student thinks individually on a given problem, make pair with his/her neighbor and discuss the problem, note down the answer in the notebook and share his/her answer with the class.
Example: Problem analysis using Data flow diagram in Software Engineering
The method is:
A) DFD at Level 0:
Think Phase question:
- List the client and potential users of Restaurant system.
Pair phase question:
- Discuss with your neighbor and confirm the list of client and potential users of Restaurant system.
Share phase question:
- Tell your written answer to the class.
B. DFD at Level 1:
Think Phase question:
- Identify the modules/processes, inputs and outputs of the Restaurant system.
Pair phase question:
- Discuss with your neighbor and write the modules/processes, inputs and outputs of the Restaurant system.
Share phase question:
- Tell your written answer to the class.
C) DFD at Level 2:
Think Phase question:
- Decompose the modules/processes; write inputs and outputs for each process of the Restaurant system.
Pair phase question:
- Discuss with your neighbor in order to decompose the modules/processes, write inputs and outputs for each process of the Restaurant system.
Share phase question:
- Tell your written answer to the class.
3. Discussion Forum: The feature in online courseware that gives the instructor the opportunity to post topics for discussion and provides the students a tool for responding. Each topic is referred to as a “thread.” The discussion is started by one member by posting a topic and other members reply. This allows members of the same group to share information and ideas.
4. Case Study Presentations: In case study, students have to make group of 2-3 members, need to identify topic of their choice from the given list, work on that topic through out semester under the guidance of teacher. Students should visit to organizations according to the domain to collect required information about the problem and produce documents such as SRS document as evidence and give presentations.
5. Problem Based Learning (PBL): Problem-based learning (PBL) is a student-centered approach in which students learn about a subject by working in groups to solve an open-ended problem. This problem is what drives the motivation and the learning. Students work in a group of 3 members. Everyone has to solve at least 3 problems on the given concepts.
Topics covered in this activity are: Process scheduling, mutual exclusion, Semaphores, Deadlocks, Memory management, Disk management
8. Surprise Test: ‘Surprise test’ encourages students to develop their knowledge, skill and attitude. It is conducted using MOODLE in MCQ mode.
This mode of learning also helps students to get mentally prepared for semester examinations. Also helps to both teachers and students to identify the gap of knowledge i.e. what I am saying in the class room and what students learn from the lecture.
The above techniques have following outcomes:
- Promote learn ability among students
- Create Self-awareness and evaluation of group processes
- Changing students role from passive learner to active learner
- Helping students to remember things better way
- Team work with their classmates
- Applying course content to real-world examples
- Develop their social skills i.e. to communicate better and have better relationships with classmates
- Problem solving across disciplines