Teachers and students play different roles in a class, teacher is the person who teaching knowledge to students, they are the one giving, in the opposite student is the person receiving. In my opinion, I prefer the student-centered teaching style.
I spent my middle school and elementary school in China, relative to most western countries. The number of students in one class in China is far greater than the western countries. Due to the large numbers, it’s almost impossible for teachers to take care of every single students, so traditional Chinese teachers pay more attention to their course efficiency, they are more likely to explain the problem as clear as they can, mention the mistake student may made in the future test. Although instructor-centered learning is very efficient, it has lost the process of student’s autonomous exploration.
There is an old saying in China, teaching people how to fish is better than giving the fish directly to them. As the saying we know the results are important, but mastery of problem solving is a lot more critical. That’s why I prefer student-centered.
With the development of the Internet, the way of teaching has become very diverse, and teaching is no longer confined to a small classroom, online teaching has become more and more popular.
The traditional way to teach is synchronous, which means students obtain the information from teachers at the same time. They go to lectures at the same time, teacher teach the knowledge and hand out homework, students use their spare time to complete it with their friends. This kind of approach is best for elementary and intermediate school students with poor self-control and regular time.
In contrast, some online teaching is asynchronous (live course is an exception). The teacher posted the recorded lesson online, and the students watched it according to their own time.
This teaching method is more suitable for college students with strong self-control or worked adults with irregular time. For this group of people, free and flexible class time is more conducive to enhance their learning efficiency.
The development of the Internet has created more opportunities for people to study and undoubtedly promote the transmission and exchange of information. It solved the problem of time in conflicting and places for teaching to a certain extent. Connectivism is a theory that explain how the internet worked for making learning easier.
Teachers will provide students with accurate information and guide students to answer the key questions by their own understanding. Teachers would encourage students to get more information online and communicating with students with different point of views. In the process of information exchange, new information will affect students’ previous judgments, which will lead to thinking, the collision of disparate thoughts produces different wonderful views. Another point is it is easy to be involved in information exchange. This makes the course more interesting and exciting, as well as the class gain becomes more diverse and valuable.
In general, I prefer a flexible teaching style that is student-centered and allows network access.
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