Provost Lecture Series Focuses on Lesson Retention Beyond the Classroom

By: Farah Rafik
@FarahRafik

Associate Provost and Professor of Writing at Stockton University in California Cara Leah Hood shared with AUC educators the challenges of teaching for transfer, an approach to educate students so that they take what they have learned in one class and apply it in the next and beyond the classroom.

Hood, who is a Distinguished Visiting Researcher (DVR) at AUC, focused her lecture at Moataz El Alfi Hall on March 11 on the hurdles present in current teaching for transfer methods and also provided coherent solutions to counter them.

The main problem that Hood highlighted was that most of what is learned inside a classroom is not applied outside of it.

“What we, as educators, desire to be teaching them is to transfer what they learned from one class to the other, to their work life, and to everywhere and everyday in their daily lives. This is not easy and has been in fact been taken for granted,” Hood explained.

Hood outlined some of the assumptions about teaching for transfer that she felt needed to be addressed, such as that teaching leads to learning, that all students successfully learn what they were previously taught, and that teachers do not need to reteach what has been taught in the past.

Hood also tried to establish a link between the problems of not teaching for transfer at her university and at AUC.

“If students take first year writing then they should take what they have acquired in a research writing class in different disciplines; however, we find out that they do not frequently remember,” Hood suggested.

Senior Instructor in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition Michael Gibson told The Caravan said one of the solutions is to integrate more writing in later courses.

“At AUC at least, students aren’t often required to write much beyond their first year. Hopefully more instructors and professors can integrate more writing into their courses,” Gibson told The Caravan.

Hood did not only critique the students’ lack of ability of carrying what they have learned outside of the classroom doors, but she also affirmed that educators need to do their part as well.

As part of her lecture, Hood armed educators with the right pedagogical strategies in order to create the adequate conditions for students to learn for transfer.

Some of  Hood’s recommendations included creating project-based assignments, and providing tools for reflection on multiple perspectives on the same topic or circumstance as well as supporting multi-contextual teaching and learning.

Teaching for transfer exceeds ordinary learning. College years is an experimental time for students to figure out their limits, and learning is a big part of that, Hood explained.

Senior Instructor at the English Language Department Nagwa Kassabgy said she chose Hood as a DVR for AUC so that she can share her expertise in the areas of aligning learning outcomes as well as the concept of transfer.

“I attended her presentation at the American Association for Colleges and Universities Conference last year and I was extremely impressed,” Kassabgy told The Caravan.