By Marcy Sutherland and Ted Galanthay
Marcy Sutherland is an instructor in the Department of Education offering courses focusing on diverse learners and learning environments in public schools. Ted Galanthay is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and specializes in mathematical ecology, mathematical modeling and dynamical systems.
We participated in the 2018-2019 Early Career Excellence Institute, sponsored by the Center for Faculty Excellence. For our final project, we were interviewed by Judith Ross-Bernstein about including student journaling in our classes. Although we implemented student journaling in different ways, we learned that we were motivated by the same universal goals, to foster students’ learning about themselves and the course material. We sought what L. Dee Fink calls significant learning [1], which is learning that results in a lasting change in the learner.
We invite you to listen to our conversations about student journaling and include your voice by commenting on what you hear. Furthermore, we encourage you to adopt journaling in your classes. Be bold! Take steps towards promoting significant learning experiences for your students in your classes.
The conversation has been split into 5 different podcast and “Inquiry and its After-Effects” is the second!
Podcast #2: Inquiry and its after-effects
This podcast describes how journals lead to student inquiry into themselves and their experiences within the class and how this affects our instruction.
Quotes from Ted Galanthay and Marcy Sutherland:
“I gave students prompts to choose from… quite often they would write about their fears or an idea they saw in class… [T]hrough what they wrote about, I learned about the students.”
“I use the journals to guide my own instruction.”
Contact us with questions.
Marcy Sutherland, Department of Education: msutherland1@ithaca.edu
Ted Galanthay, Department of Mathematics: tgalanthay@ithaca.edu
[1] L. Dee Fink. Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to designing college courses. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2013.
