Curiosity Killed the Cat

But it never killed our educational system. In fact, curiosity is what probably inspired so many of the great things we have today. At some point in time the greatest inventors, scientists, artists, etc. felt compelled to ask the question “what if?”. The question, that when answered, led them down the rabbit hole into our current history books.

When thinking about a “learner centered classroom” you have to design your course keeping in mind, wait for it: THE LEARNERS. Revolutionary isn’t it? But as simple as it may sound, things are always easier said than done. So how do we go about creating a learner centered environment in our classrooms?

We don’t want to simply create obedient learners – we want to develop our students to the point of them wanting to engage in learning beyond the classroom. So keeping in mind the learning objectives you must make sure you meet (because accreditation duh), how would a novice approach those topics? What are some questions that you anticipate having on the subject? Put yourself in their shoes.

So just like the gif above, your students come from various backgrounds both personally and academically. It’ll be hard to please everyone. However what’s important is that you make a meaningful attempt to educate them keeping their viewpoint in mind. As we elevate to expert status we often find ourselves forgetting how hard it is to grasp something  – even if you did go through multiple examples. But keep in mind what it took for us to get to expert level – the things we find ourselves having mastery over. Sometimes it was forced (for an assignment) but before that point we too wanted to answer the question “what if?”.

We became curious about the topic we wanted to study. When we didn’t get it, we went to learn more about it, investigate, ask questions of people we trusted to provide us with a meaningful answer. When learning about something new and personally exciting to us, we revert back to the novice stage or in layman terms – infant learning.

Ok maybe not this infant, but in general we go through the curiosity stages in order to discover and learn about the things we’re interested in. It’s this that we must keep in mind when developing our courses.

We should encourage and develop students’ curiosity on the subject matter – especially those topics that are much harder to grasp. In order to engage students in the learning we have to engage everything that makes them them – the real life examples, the relation to personal experience, the relation to future courses and careers. You want to piqued their interest, engage their minds, and allow their curiosity to blossom.