Teaching and the Human Brain

Introduction

As traditional education approaches become increasingly outdated and even irrelevant, students will become acutely aware of the disadvantages of old instructional delivery methods as they desire the convenience and flexibility afforded by new educational technologies. Many colleges and universities already have added courses that either are hybrid (i.e., brick-and-mortar mixed with online engagement and activities) or exclusively online which are responsive to the demanding schedule needs of today's students. Online education, in particular, has become popular because it gives many students a broad, diverse access to many educational opportunities and interactions that might not be otherwise possible because of the demands of their personal and work schedules. There are four key factors that shape the virtual learning environment: socialization, internalization, combination, and externalization. Each of these factors has been demonstrated to be positively correlated to performance in the virtual knowledge environment. In the virtual environment these factors must be incorporated into the student assessment process, especially as they relate to student-faculty contact and interaction, the essential need for timely student feedback, student's cooperation, and the value of time and deadlines on tasks and assignments.

Socialization, for example, can be just as challenging in the virtual learning setting as in the traditional environment. For an educator, the element of a virtual learning setting provides the individual with the capability to observe and track in real time, the student's motivation, intellectual commitment, and peer performance standards. However, an educator and student also can miss the benefit of having face-to-face interaction in the classroom as well as the proactive sense that comes when students are engaged in the classroom and when educators are able to bring in other materials and sources from other disciplines to enrich the course materials. So it is important to ensure the assessment process emphasizes proper and relevant attributes that are key for active learning. Specifically, the online requirements parallel real-time educational interaction: responding with frequent emails and correspondence that answer questions, offer comments about course content, and give focused instructions; scheduling virtual office hours; acknowledging all questions from students; providing models and samples of assignments to demonstrate course expectations, and following up on feedback, especially if students fail to respond initially to the instructor's comments. Practiced diligently, the approach ensures students will find the most comfortable ways in which to receive feedback and interact with both instructors and students.

Building Effective Assessment

In the online setting, tools such as peer reviews, discussion boards, live chats, and team or group projects, and any team learning can prime the environment effectively for active learning. This objective of socialization remains formidable, even in the traditional face-to-face classroom setting. Students might isolate themselves deliberately because they are shy, introverted, unsure, or even insecure about engaging actively with their peers. The challenge is similar in the virtual setting. What I normally do, for example, in the initial assignments for the first week of class is offer students an individual assignment that then becomes the basis for a team project designed to foster a classroom setting conducive to socialization. This assignment serves as a bridge, enabling students to engage and contribute to building a sense of community in the virtual environment. Thus there are carryovers from the traditional classroom setting to the online environment as the professor explains and explains defines course goals, performance objectives, grading and evaluation. The grading criteria and rubrics should indicate the relative emphasis on facts, critical thinking, and analysis, reasoning and other measures important to the course, but they should also lead the students toward a path of active learning. Thus, the value of text-based asynchronous interaction is extremely important. For example, making peer feedback available on assignments encourages personal responsibility, collaborative skills, and group processing. The goal is to get the students to become interactive and be responsible for their own learning and the learning of the team in which they collaborate.

Likewise, internalization, combination, and externalization have found to be positively related to performance in a virtual learning environment. I try to reach the students in different ways and methods based on the subject matter or the nature of the course and method of delivery or the combination of methods. Several studies (Tsai and Ghoshal, 1998;Yli-Renko et al, 2001), have shown that the acquisition and cultivation of social capital are associated with greater knowledge acquisition and exploitation, which can be achieved by engaging an infrastructure process based on knowledge that already has been developed or aggregated. One of the learning tools I use in the marketing management class involves a video that takes the students through the formative development of Google from a text marketing search engine to the analytical, multitasking powerhouse it has become (http://windowsmedia.pearsoncmg.com/ph/bp/bp video library/Google.wvx). This demonstration fosters a climate for social engagement among the enrolled students by offering their feedback and comments on a topic with which they have become most familiar.

Furthermore, online tools such as a blog and chat facilitate an ongoing conversation on the Google platform. Here, instructors ask students to articulate what they hope/intend to accomplish in the course, to provide and assess websites and pages that enrich learning; to develop projects and learning activities; to encourage thoughts as well as facts as they critique other students' work, and, in general, to reflect on their own work and performance, the evolution of their learning, problems and examples used during the course and from their own experience, and processes involved. Students can contribute significantly to exploring the question of why this new knowledge is important.

Once the individual assignment has been completed, teams are tasked with new assignments and once the data are collected the teams are asked to complete a series of interactive exercises to continue their engagement and develop their knowledge base. In order to avoid the potential problems of being distracted or losing motivation in the course, the instructor can approach this challenge in several ways. The instructor should select real world cases and examples, which are relevant, and offer real-world assignments that allow students to apply course concepts. The instructor should also incorporate short benchmarks for feedback in an ongoing basis from the students and to the students. The instructor can emphasize that student replies and feedback are important values of online discussions, which can be incorporated or weighted in final grades. Thus, the engagement in an online setting becomes just as valuable and as effective as in the traditional face-to-face setting. Ensuring the course content is as fresh and timely as possible, the instructor addresses, in part at least, the fact that there are many external sources competing for students' attention. No doubt, the problem is evident in the face-to-face classroom setting too. The ever-present phone and Internet connection are equally problematic in both instructional settings but the instructor in the virtual learning environment must be fully aware of the need to help a student recognize her learning style which, in turn, strengthens her academic performance. Furthermore, the online environment provides the best platform for distinguishing the learning styles of others, which can expand a student's collection of learning strategies. Thus, the following applies to what students have come to expect in the online world:

• Collaborative tasks-task groups meeting or performing tasks suited to a virtual environment, often eliminating the need for travel, and specifically addressing logistical concerns.

• Risk assessment-activities that could carry significant transformative consequences in the real world can be risk assessed as a 'virtual task' (i.e., simulation) in a virtual world prior to the real event.

Simulation of a real-world situation can help to drive home the point as in, for example, a case analysis regarding a company like Apple or Lenovo.

As indicated earlier, the assessment process built into student evaluations for such courses should take into account the various learning engagement points that enhanced the learning experience. Learning always involves conscious and unconscious processes (Caine, 1990). Students have the ability to learn much more than they ever might consciously understand or acknowledge. To reach their full capabilities we, as instructors, must provide information in as many ways and forms as possible through different media so that all of the students' senses are impacted. That interaction can shape and influence the student's learning process cycle. There is a body of well-established research here: "having reached the brain, this information emerges in it conscious with some delay, or it influences motives and decisions" (Lozanov, 1978a). Human beings remember what they have experienced; not just what they have been told. So reaching the students by many different methods and media can be manifested in dynamic benefits. The virtual learning environment offers the capacity to be witness to the interaction as it unfolds in the online environment, because technology affords the advantage of capturing quickly and efficiently all of the data connected to the student's participation and engagement in the virtual course. In turn, the infrastructure provides the student the capabilities to review lecture and exercise notes, take practice quizzes as needed, reply and respond on discussion boards, and ask questions through individual email, all at the student's own convenience and comfortable pace.

The virtual learning environment is no different than the face-to-face class in how student engagement with the instructional environment affects academic performance. Students who have lower rates and levels of online engagement have lower final marks, whether or not that online access or use occurs on campus or at home (Mogus, 2012). Although students are more likely to use a virtual learning environment while on campus rather than at home, the place where they access the virtual learning environment (i.e., home or university campus) does not significantly affect their performance (Chanchary and Haque, 2007). Measurable factors of success include appropriate motivation, student opportunities to interact with and collaborate with peers, a variety of instructional delivery methods, and the presence of user-oriented technology and teachers actively participating in the online environment. The accessible range of components for the virtual learning environment offers various opportunities to enhance studentcentered learning and these impacts cumulatively can influence their final academic results and grades (Pislaru and Mishra, 2009). Thus, those students who are sufficiently motivated to reap the potential range of benefits afforded by the virtual learning experience will likely achieve desirable, positive academic results, and will likely build upon their own confidence and self-efficacy to move through all aspects of the virtual learning process and the tools and platforms made available. Thus, students responding in the final assessment process also will provide the instructor relevant input as to the validity and usefulness of the current virtual learning infrastructure. Furthermore, instructors are better informed to incorporate a virtual infrastructure that accommodates flexibly the various learning styles different students prefer (Heaton-Shrestha et al., 2007).

Research has shown that a virtual learning environment should, if suitably designed, accommodate a variety of learning approaches, including active and reflective styles (Entwistle, 2003). Students who prefer to learn online might adopt a more independent style, while the on-campus student is more dependent upon a fixed structure (Heaton et al., 2007). For example, among students who spend two or more hours per week on pre-and post-processing of the lectures, there is evidence that 'heavy' virtual learning environment users perform better than non-users in the final examination and that the 'heavy' users' performance in the virtual learning environment emerges as the best predictor of the grades in the final examination (Stricker et al., 2011).

As for tracking and monitoring student activity in a virtual learning environment, log files in the virtual learning environment allow educators to collect and subsequently review statistical data such as how students discover and use different course materials, their approaches to the forum and usage, how long they view various elements and at what times, and their interactions and replies with their peers (Zorilla et al., 2005). Some research has shown the majority of students (75 percent, in one study) use a computer for research on the Internet on a daily basis while others use it several times a week or month (Mogus, 2012). Using the Internet for learning purposes on a daily basis is the case, however, for only 16 percent of students (Mogus, 2012).

In summary, 45 percent of students do such activities several times a week, 25 percent do so monthly and 12 percent rarely. Thus, one can conclude that the majority of students use a computer and the Internet for learning on at least a weekly basis, which is a sufficient indicator for making available as broad as possible opportunities for student engagement in the virtual learning environment (Mogus, 2012). Downloading content of any kind from the Internet daily is accomplished by 22 percent of students, and 38 percent do so several times a week. Some 29 percent of the students download content on at least a monthly basis while just a small fraction of students does so rarely. Almost 78 percent of students regularly participate in online forums and chats outside of a virtual learning environment, for social, non-course-related activities.

On average, students started to use computers when they were 10 (Mogus, 2012). Today, that statistic likely would reflect a much earlier age as hands-on digital technology has become so widespread and affordable (see chart below). Chickering and Gamson concluded a student's success is predicated upon two teaching principles. The first encourages student-faculty interaction, while the second emphasizes the cooperation and engagement among the students. Prompt feedback is critical especially in fostering the student's most effective time on task, and on drawing important connections between the course's content and real-world problem applications. When realistic performance expectations are clearly communicated by instructors through practical exercises and open commutations, it will enable students to have a better understanding of the criteria required for successful performance. The students will also gain insights about expected performances necessary for real-world problem solving (Magnani et al., 1999;Vye et al., 1998). The cooperation among students is a principle underlying the acknowledgment of how social interaction enhances learning (Svinicki, 1999). A better understanding of concepts occurs when students have active learning experiences. The students need the ability and the opportunities to talk, to listen, to engage and to reflect with their peers as they participate in problem-solving exercises that require them to apply newly acquired knowledge and skills (Millis & Cottrell, 1998).

Assessment in a course such as International Consumer Behavior, for example is segmented into four groups as indicated below. The key is making sure that the assessment focuses on student behaviors most closely aligned with productive learning skills.