Month: December 2019

12/5/19

Sam, Isabella and Adam

How did the course content of WRT 120 change or not change our point of view of higher education?

Freire and Percy have solidified in my mind that you cant learn in a traditional classroom setting. We discussed that the course did change all of our points of view on higher education. After doing peer reviews and reading different essays, it all made us feel more connected. It made us realize that a lot of our ideas and morals are similar to each other. For example, we all talked about similar ways students can learn outside the classroom. This discussion made us think more about having student connections and how they are beneficial to us. Discussion groups were a major part of this because they helped us meet new people also see anew point of view on different ideas.

leader- olivia

participants- sabrina lindley

In this discussion we talked about WRT 120 and how it helped us this semester. We said that writing 120 helped us to understand education and our classes better by reading Percy and Freire. I got a better understanding of what good education is. We also said that having meetings with our professor helped us to become better writers by getting feedback and critiques on our work. The discussion groups also helped me to understand the content of Percy and Freire better by learning other students’ perspectives on the content. I also enjoyed the writing discussion groups because we got to get out of the classroom and go to different locations and meet other students in a different environment. Writing 120 was very beneficial to me and definitely improved my writing skills and I will take all that I learned and apply it to my next semester WRT 200 course.

Topic: We will be discussing how these discussion groups helped us this semester as well as the pros and cons and what can be done to improve them.

Location: Inside Lawrence at the tables next to Einsteins.

Time and date: Thursday @ 3:30

Participants: Meghan and I

In this mornings discussion group, Meghan and I talked about how the past semester has gone and what we learned from Percy and Friere. We discussed the different teaching styles we went over and how effective they are. We also talked about the different project topics and what we learned from them. Seeing as Meghan and I worked together for both projects, we compared idea while working on our projects and what teaching styles could be most effective to students success. In our last project, we combined different ways of indirect teaching styles like student-led classes and fieldwork experience. By doing this, we learned a lot about how important it is for professors to really do the method that is proven most effective for the given major.

Topic: We will discuss our overall thoughts on Writing 120 and how we think this class helped us with our first semester at WCU.

When: Thursday December 4th @ 12:15 in Sykes lobby

Problem: Students at West Chester are not able to do work in classes because other classes are giving more work or not enough work in classes. The students cannot be successful in their main courses if classes are not a main priority.

 Solution: Change the workload in the classes that are not a big effect on the person’s major/grade. Also, for major courses have more work but relates to my major and I will use for future reference. 

Effects: Students will only focus on their major and work for those classes only.

Students will be less stressed about the classes that are not as important. 

 Professors can work mainly on the material that they want to give the students instead of having to give extra work. 

Students now can focus on extracurriculars and get a job. 

Problem: “learning” is through lecture based, memorization classes and it prevents students from correctly processing the information given to them.

Solution: Restructuring student schedules to have smaller class sizes for students

Effects: More one on one interaction between classmates and teachers

Class structured not to memorize but to understand information

more balanced teaching styles to all students

more student engagement by opening up the class to more discussion based activities

Problem: Most lecture based classes are taught on a memorization structure. This is a problem because actual learning does not take place in these kinds of environments.

Solution: Implementing an additional class period containing smaller number of student for more one-on-one interactions and have more of a group discussion based structure.

Effects: Students get the interactions between each other and the teacher for actual learning to take place

Less memorization is taking place

Maybe difficult to schedule these class periods for all classes

Leads to better overall grades

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17Ixx3Z2fxy7q4jsGYN3zgQ4BaT6bfz-WT17rtJi-nNU/edit?usp=sharing

Students don’t spend enough time preparing for their classes, requiring students to study outside the classroom will overall benefit their academic quality at college. Students using online resources, starting studying groups, using other resources, and just overall studying will preform better in their classes.

Problem: A problem at I see occurring a lot at WCU is the extreme variation in classes. I understand that professors have different ways of teaching materials but the amount of out of projects/ homework given in a class should reflect that amount of work. Too many professors at WCU give too much or not enough assignments that don’t justifice the material talked about in class. 

Solution: Classes that are not directly impacts the students major should not exceed the amount of out of class work than the classes that do. Also classes that do impact the major should be giving the student more opportunities to learn and research the material in class by giving more work.

1. This will relieve stress on students that worry so much about classes that they do not even care about.
2. This will make students focus more on their major of choice and the topics they are interested in. 
3. This will help the professors as well because now they do not have to worry about assigning pointless work to students who are not even interested in the materials. 
4. It is also no longer taking away from the students who want to learn and from students whose is that  major

Sean Redding

WRT120

                                                                                Project #3 Proposal

Problem: Too often students have to sit through classes that they don’t care about, and or pay attention when not in the mood to learn. Students with ADD and ADHD suffer the most, not being able to sit through lectures without spacing out. AT WCU students are expected to sit through lectures and try to retain everything a professor says, then get tested on if they were paying attention during those lectures.

Solution: I believe that if WCU were to enforce more interactive classes and have students take part in the reverse classroom concept. This will allow students to be invested in the class rather than spacing out and missing information. Student will learn/teach in their own ways and get graded accordingly.

1. Allow students to teach themselves in a way that is beneficial to them since every person is different.
2. This would support both Percy and Freire theories on letting students take charge of their education
3. Having more interactive classes rather than lectures would keep students involved rather than zoning out and not retaining information just being told to them.
4. Students with mental health issues retaining to attention will allow students to learn and grasp more concepts hands on.

Problem: Education is evolving at a faster rate than professors can keep up with. As new curriculum and methods are being created and implemented, long time professors struggle to keep up with or adapt to the new methodologies, rather than the traditional lecturing towards a passive audience.

Solution: Have younger and newer professors help the older and more long time professors learn the new methodologies and help them to implement them into the classroom.

Effects:

• This will create a more open and inclusive classroom environment where students will feel more free to express their opinions in a way that contributes to the learning, instead of allowing themselves to simply be lectured at.
• Education will be more uniform across the University because professors will all be using very similar methods in their classrooms
• Both younger and older professors will benefit and have a learning experience of their own learning the new methods from younger professors and a more classical approach from the older ones
• Students will want to be more engaged in classroom discussions because the professors are no longer just lecturing towards the students and are rather more open to student ideas