Julia DiGiorgio
29 September, 2019
WRT120
Topic #4 Course Based Learning
The course-based learning atmosphere at West Chester University is “learning” by the student’s choice, initiative, and action. In Freire’s essay, “The Banking Concept of Education”, he addresses the issue of student learning and the freedom within it. Bio100 taught at West Chester is a course-based class that needs to be changed in order to educate the students at WCU. This course contains 150 people per class and strictly note taking the whole time. On the other hand, the syllabus is lying to the school and the students taking the class.
Freire’s essay he states that “Words are emptied of their concreteness and become a hollow, alienated, and alienating verbosity.” (page one paragraph 2). The PowerPoint presentations become exactly what Freire wrote, words become so meaningless and boring it loses the attention and ability to learn and process the information. Bio100 is a grade of an exam and the lab grade. There is no attendance grade not showing that people are even going to these long lectures which seem pointless to students when they cannot even process and learn the information in class. In the class syllabus the very first learning outcome states that “General Education Goal #1: Communicate effectively. “When in reality the information is not being addressed in an effective way to students. Freire wrote “Teachers limit creativity of students” (paragraph 5 page 1) I completely agree with Freire because there is actually no creativity being produced.
The syllabus has several points that the class should contain in which it is not completing. There are several student learning objectives in which so far, the class has failed to accomplish. This course claims to “SLO: Employ quantitative methods to examine a problem in the natural or physical world.”In this course we have not done anything that we can apply to a problem in the real world. The labs we finish are completed on a computer and there is no hands-on completion to completely know what is going on and learn effectively from it. Another goal is that “General Education Goal #2: Think critically and analytically” In this course there is no time or things to do that involve thinking critically and analytically. The whole 50 minutes is copying the PowerPoint and not doing anything to actually challenge ourselves. The only way to study is by memorization and little challenging and actually process the information.
West Chester University needs to address the reality that course-based learning is not an effective way to learn considering it is memorization that is used for the course and never used again. There are several ideas I have to change Bio100 for the better. The interaction with groups or group projects will not only help process the information to students but it also encourages social interaction and relationships. The labs should be modified to understand the concept of what we are learning and apply it to real life situations and not a multiple choice lab. The class needs to be modified in an effective way for the students and not so much of a convient way for the teacher.
Constructive: make sure you connect your own ideas to Freire’s not just listing his ideas and your own ideas (try and connect the 2)
Positive: your ideas are clear and very informative
constructive criticism: I think you have your ideas organized well, just some sentences get confusing. For this sentence — Freire wrote “Teachers limit creativity of students” (paragraph 5 page 1) I completely agree with Freire because there is actually no creativity being produced. — i think you should stay why creativity is not being produced. in what ways are teachers denying students creativity? I think you should make your body paragraphs solutions to the problem.
positive reinforcement: BIO is a strong choice as an example of this. You have a really good introduction!
Your introduction is a great start, but I will think more about concluding my thesis. I think that you should add some solutions to this problem and also introduce them in the introduction. Solutions you would do to change the way of learning in this course, and incorporate them in the paragraph and connecting them with the relevant problem this solution is addressing to.
I think your paper is really good so far. I think you got your points across clearly and had a good use of quotes. Maybe add more examples of ways that they could fix this problem.