Teaching Statement - Thomas Link
I have included service learning components in many courses. Service learning provides students the opportunity to apply academic skills in a meaningful context and to bring richer, more diverse experiences to classroom topics. More than just volunteerism, service learning is an on-going dialogue between the discipline and the community, a dialogue which informs both. Service learning extends learning beyond the classroom by actively involving students in meeting community needs. Students have volunteered in schools, ESL programs, at-risk programs for youth, nursing homes, and social change agencies.
I have made contacts with some of the agencies myself, and students have gone into the community themselves, learning the landscape in the process. Students also help classmates and future students as they find and share opportunities and their experiences. The final writing assignment asks them to write to future students in their position.
I also try to lead by example. I currently teach adult basic education as a volunteer at the Goodwill Community Learning Center, where I have been for over 5 years. I incorporate my observations of how adults learn and how community agencies can grow and aid people into the course.
In the project I look for the skills observation and synthesis.
I believe that students remember the course information that has been integrated into their existing knowledge. I use multiple writing assignments across the quarter to elicit from them existing opinions and knowledge base, and explore with them how to compare and relate the new information, and the methods used to gather that information, with what they already know.
Writing is a useful took in organizing one's thoughts. I use a variety of assignments, from reaction papers to research reports, to show how one's thinking guides the structure of the writing, and how the process of writing can reshape one's ideas.
For example, here is information from one class' syllabus.
A fundamental ability in scientific literacy goes beyond, or perhaps before, being able to compute formulas and arrive at the correct number is the ability to make the numbers express your point and understand why people choose the numbers they do to express their points. Students collect their own data and we work together to determine what the data says and how we can express that to other people.
In the project I look for the skills ofapplication and evaluation, so that they see the types of judgments that go into choice of design, choice of measurement, choice of scale, etc..
I have developed demonstrations and exercises that reach different learning styles, those that include small group, large group, and individual work. Some exercises are kinesthetically based, some tactile, and some combine different modalities. Within the subject matter of appropriate topics, we discuss the concept and origin of different learning styles and their relation to memory, learning, emotion, and other aspects of the person. In the context of exam review we discuss reading, note taking and review strategies that emphasize meta-cognitive thinking and conscious choice of study strategies.
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Last Modified: April 10, 1996
Dr. Thomas Link
tomlink@pop.seanet.com