w/ my students in EME 2040, Spring 2024
I study how people learn to give feedback and how they learn from giving it. My teaching is built on the same idea: students learn most when they explain, question, and respond to each other’s work, not only when they listen to me. Since fall 2023, I have taught EME 2040 Introduction to Educational Technology, an undergraduate course for pre-service teachers, in person and online. I have also supported six online graduate courses as a teaching assistant.
Students share their curiosity and disagreement only when they feel safe to be uncertain. I bring in real issues from the schools they will soon work in. When Florida changed its academic standards, students discussed what the changes might mean for their future classrooms, and I made sure that students with different views each had room to explain their reasoning. When many students said they preferred paper exams to computer-based ones, we used that to ask when technology helps learning and when it gets in the way. I want every future teacher to leave my course with a critical perspective on technology.
Explaining an idea to a peer deepens the explainer’s own understanding (Okita & Schwartz, 2013), so students in my classes lead discussion, troubleshoot together, and present their designs to peers. In jigsaw activities, each group becomes expert on one tool and teaches it to the others. In quick pitches, students explain a lesson idea in two minutes and answer classmates’ questions. My research found that reviewers’ questions led to more productive exchanges than their suggested solutions, so I plan to ask students to respond to each other’s work with questions before they offer advice. I see my role as a designer of activities and a facilitator rather than the only authority in the room.
As an international student, I know what it is like to learn in a second language. In a graduate seminar, by the time I had worked out how to express an idea, the discussion had often moved on. Now, before moving to a new topic, I ask whether anyone has a last comment, which gives students who need more time a way in. Equity also means adjusting support to each student’s needs. When I taught students who use screen readers, I found that the design platforms used in earlier semesters did not work with assistive technology, so I replaced them with platforms compatible with VoiceOver and JAWS. I now check that materials work with assistive technology and use Universal Design for Learning principles when I design new activities.
I tell students from the first day that I care most about what they learn, and I design grading to support that goal, with clear criteria and chances to revise. At the end of the semester, I post the main course topics on a whiteboard, students add sticky notes describing what they learned under each one, and we discuss as a class what we gained and what could be improved. The notes often show growth I did not expect, in media literacy, critical thinking about technology, and openness to new ideas. My emphasis on reflection comes from my own experience in classes taught by Dr. Catherine Chase and Dr. Bret Staudt Willet during my master’s and Ph.D. programs, which showed me how much students can gain from reflective practice.
Meta-reflection practice in EME 2040
My students will teach in classrooms shaped by generative AI. Rather than banning or simply promoting AI, I ask students to evaluate AI output against their own standards, and I discuss its limits and ethics openly. I developed course materials on AI for EME 2040, contributed to a team project guiding pre-service teachers to co-create with generative AI (Provost’s Showcase of Scholarly Teaching, 2025), and am part of a research team studying how pre-service teachers evaluate AI-generated lesson plans. Not every student is enthusiastic, and I treat their skepticism as a starting point for discussion rather than something to overcome. I completed the Stanford d.school course Teach Like It’s 2040: AI-Powered Teaching (2025) to strengthen this part of my teaching.
Reference: Okita, S. Y., & Schwartz, D. L. (2013). Learning by teaching human pupils and teachable agents: The importance of recursive feedback. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 22(3), 375–412.