Nancy Peiffer is an academic English teacher at the Language Center and talks briefly about her experience with the Mixed Classroom workshop in practice the VU Centre for Teaching & Learning.
"What appealed to me most about the Mixed Classroom in Practice workshop was the focus on diversity. I have very diverse groups to whom I teach and I really wanted to learn more about that."
A safe environment can increase student motivation and engagement
The most important thing I learned from this course is that reducing students' lack of perception and creating a safe environment in the classroom can increase student engagement. This then increases their motivation to achieve the learning goals of the course. If a student has more interaction with her or his teacher and other students in an environment perceived as safe, this can result in motivation to do the in-class exercises and course assignments and want to achieve a higher grade. Furthermore, this helps students feel more at home not only in the course, but also in the university learning environment. Therefore, I plan to revise the activities listed in our course booklet for smaller and larger groups.
More interaction
Although sometimes I don't have much room in my lesson plan to add additional content, I do now try to allocate 10 to 15 minutes for an activity in which the students get to know each other better and thus interact with each other more. For example, for the first lesson with a new group, I added the task "50 seconds. Then I make pairs and the students have 50 seconds to write down as many things they have in common as possible without naming physical similarities.
Learning outcomes of the workshop
I also learned a lot from the activities, which were very challenging. Like the activity about identification and how you would identify yourself. A student also came to talk about her hot moment: a moment when she felt uncomfortable during class and what problems came with it. That was very interesting to hear. I also found the reflective elements very informative to do, including creating a portfolio.
I could recommend the workshops to anyone, especially teachers, but also, for example, coordinators of lesson plans for beginning students. There are lots of activities from the Mixed Classroom model that you can use to get new students interested in our programs, for example during open days when guest lectures are given.
My tip for future participants is: make time to prepare for the workshops, that really ensures that you can get everything out of the workshops."
Interested in this workshop series as well?
Visit the Mixed Classroom workshops webpage.
