One of the biggest honors I received this fall was winning the Distinguished Innovative Teacher Award from the Ohio Communication Association earlier this month. It was nice to be recognized by my colleagues at Ohio Northern University and other communication professionals across Ohio.
One of the areas that earned me this honor was my style of teaching. I would try to apply the Kolb’s model of Learning Styles, which basically has the student go through a new concrete experience (sometimes this is in the form of a modified lecture, sometimes this in the form of some type of in-class exercise, and sometimes this is in the form of simulation). The experience would be followed by either a reflective analysis of the experience or a means to observe the experience and provide an analysis based on the inconsistencies between what they learned in the classroom environment and what they experienced in the practice environment of the course. Students by this point should be able to present some sort of modification to the knowledge gained from the class. The overall goal of this process is to apply this knowledge to the real world in the form of experimentation.
The clearest example of how I perform this model is during our Practicum courses in Multimedia Journalism. The students must complete six modules related to journalism (the journalism breakdown, ethics in journalism, writing evaluation, photojournalism, applied mediated content, and using a content management system [CMS]). These modules represent the concrete experience. The students provide a form of reflective analysis via the discussion about completing the modules. We proceed to workshop the writing of stories in the abstract conceptualization phase of the course. Active experimentation comes in the form of writing nine stories for the Northern Review and writing the analysis of how much they have improved throughout the course of the semester. I believe that my students benefit from this process. One example of feedback that I have received from Practicum was “This class opened so many doors for me and has me looking at career options I didn’t even know are possible! Meeting once a week is tough, but seems to work for the subject matter. Great use of hands-on activities and real-world applications. A wonderful addition to communication art.”
Another example that my colleagues have pointed to in my nomination for this award was my means of organizing and implementing the instruction of my course. For example, one of my colleagues wrote:
“I’ve seen many teachers in my day go through the motions. I can assure you that this fault does not include the nominee. Dr. Tilton’s hands-on activities, guest lectures, and special topics courses are innovative teachings in themselves. Each one lends credibility as to why this nominee is thinking ‘outside-the-box’ when it comes to teaching innovatively.” My hope is that my students do not experience “death-by-PowerPoint” in my courses.
I believe that the final reason that my colleagues nominated me for this award (and the reason that ultimately helped me earn this honor) was my use of ludological techniques in the classroom. I have used games like “Are You a Werewolf?” to teach aspects of small group communication (specifically the developments of roles with small groups & power structures that emerge within small group structures) to multiple groups of students taking the basic communication course. This particular lesson was one of my more successful in terms of learning the concepts presented in the course.
It is nice to be recognized for my work, and I hope to continue to innovate within the classroom.
