Running Head: REFLECTION ON LEARNING BY DOING 1

Nabin Duthraj

Reflection on learning by doing

International Teachers College

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Summary

The journal article Learning by Doing: An Empirical Study of Active Teaching

Techniques by Jana, Erin, and Kate talks about the teaching techniques lecture,

demonstrations, discussions, and in-class activities. The authors claim that this teaching

methods will benefits both teachers and students. Active teaching help students to engage in

classroom activities and improves the academic performance. The teaching technique Lecture

is like a teacher centered instructional method. This method provides lesson information to the

students. This technique is useful to provide and to receive a vast amount of information in the

big classroom. Demonstrations is another effective technique of active teaching. The

dictionary meaning of demonstration is to showing the things by doing. This technique benefits

students because the students participate in it and other students can see how the things works.

But all the students cannot participate in this technique because the time would be not enough.

Another teaching technique is discussion. This technique enables students to explore issues of

interest, opinions, and ideas. In-class activities is another active teaching technique. This

technique requires all the students to engage in the lesson. This technique enables students to

understand the lesson better than other techniques because in this technique the students practice

and know the lesson better.

Evaluation

The authors of this journal article are reliable and I am agreed on them. They claim that

the lecturing, demonstrations, discussions, and class-activities are the effective techniques of

active teaching and it is effective indeed. The authors are trust worthy because they just do not

identify the benefits of the active teaching technique but they also mention the weakness of the

teaching techniques. For example; - the advantage of the demonstrations technique is written in
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the page 43, demonstration is more active than lecture because the students are able to get

involved and see first-hand how the construct or phenomena presents itself in the real world.

The weakness of the demonstration technique on the page 44 is that the other students passively

receiving information because not all the students can participate the demonstration but they

can see it. So, this journal article is beneficial for the teachers to be effective teachers.

Reflection

To reflect this journal article in my life, I remember the Bible verse John 3:16. Jesus

demonstrates His love by giving his life for the world. John 3:16 says, For God so loved the

world that he gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have

eternal life. After I read the journal article Learning by Doing: An Empirical Study of Active

Teaching Techniques I have learned that I should demonstrate the lesson in my teaching. I

remember my last teaching practicum, I was teaching mathematics. It was about measuring the

units. I did not only teach how to convert one unit to another but I demonstrate how to measure

and convert unit by showing the picture of basketball pole. I had a ruler and I showed them how

to measure and told them the formula of how to convert the units. I also understand the

importance of lecturing technique and I will be using this method as well as to provide

information of the lesson. I will use this technique because it is useful even in the big classroom.

I will be using discussion and class-activities techniques in my teaching because it involves

students in the lesson and they can easily grasp the lesson.
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Work Cited

Erin D, Jana Hackathorn. Kate L, Solomon. Learning by Doing: An Empirical Study of

Active Teaching Techniques. The Journal of Effective Teaching, Vol. 11, No. 2, 2011,

40-54.