Week 4: Collaboration Cafe In reviewing the four classroom management styles, think about these questions:

Week 4: Collaboration Cafe
In reviewing the four classroom management styles, think about these questions:
1. What sort of classroom management style will you exhibit once you begin teaching?
2. Which style is most consistent with your personality?
3. How might you work to achieve changes if you don’t like what you see?
Post your answers to these questions in the Collaboration Cafe and then discuss with your classmates how effective this style might be with various groups of students.
Your instructor will be monitoring the Collaboration Cafe but not participating as this is your opportunity to give and receive feedback from your peers. The Collaboration Cafe is graded this week (25 points). Please see the grading guidelines and rubric. Scholarly references are not required.
Classroom Management Styles
Every faculty member will have a unique style when managing the classroom. There are four predominate management styles that have been identified by Baumrind (1971) and that can be characterized by the type of control over students and the degree of involvement of the teacher with the students. There have been studies that compare classroom management styles with parenting styles. The four styles are authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and indulgent. The four styles are aligned with levels of teacher involvement and discipline.
Lecturing
Lecturing remains an efficient instructional method for conveying information to a large number of students. The size of the class, however, causes students to be anonymous and basically, get lost in the crowd. The quality and quantity of faculty/student interactions are directly related to the level of student engagement. In addition, students develop greater thinking skills, which foster the application of knowledge. There are various styles of lectures that can increase the interaction between faculty member and student.
• Participatory lecture: Learners brainstorm ideas on the topic based on what they have read in preparation. As the lecture progresses, the faculty member adds or clarifies information. With this method, students feel some ownership of the topic and are able to construct new information, though this will require students to undergo some preparation, which may or may not occur.
• Feedback lecture: This is actually a series of mini-lectures interspersed with 10-minute small-group discussions structured around questions. This helps the learner to both apply and recall knowledge.
• Mediated lecture: This type of lecture incorporates media, such as films or Web-based images or clips (e.g., YouTube). The use of media is beneficial for various learning styles and often makes the topic more engaging or interesting. Overuse of media, however, can adversely impact the learning environment.
References
Baumrind, D. (1971). Current patterns of parental authority. Developmental Psychology Monographs, 4, 1–103. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0030372
Distance Education
One of the many challenges facing educators who are teaching via distance education is conveying large amounts of information (i.e., 150 textbook pages of content over endocrine-related health conditions). Even if synchronous chat rooms or video conferencing are available, there is simply no time to provide information in the traditional lecture style. From the student’s perspective, he or she is faced with reading, understanding, and retaining unfamiliar information contained in multiple chapters in which all of the information seems to be equally important. Both the educator and the student/staff are equally overwhelmed by this task.
Because the lecture in its most traditional format is not possible via distance education, the challenge confronting the educator is assisting the student without causing dependence on the faculty member (i.e., “spoon-feeding” the student). The following tips are presented in order to help resolve this dilemma.
• Make sure that all of the required reading assignments are truly necessary. For example, if a chapter on endocrine illnesses contains several pages on rare health conditions, assign these pages as recommended rather than required. Of course, if the pages are listed as recommended, no test questions may be developed from this content.
• Identify priorities for the student. For example, identify that nursing interventions are of prime importance or that the information in a table should be reviewed carefully.
• Always reserve 15 or 20 minutes of synchronous chat time to summarize previous content and to make suggestions about upcoming content.
• Finally, with distance-education students, it is important that faculty members assume that a variety of learning styles are presented among the enrolled individuals. Therefore, faculty should always employ a variety of instructional formats whenever possible so that the various learning styles of distance-education students are accommodated.
Summary
Presenting to large classes is a reality on most campuses and in healthcare settings. Instead of dreading this type of instructional method, challenge yourself to develop an interactive environment that fosters students’ and staff learning and critical thinking. Try new ideas or techniques. Become the educator that students and staff look forward to having as an instructor.
Managing a large lecture classroom involves establishing reasonable rules for student behavior. Identify and set your expectations on the first day of class. Establish firm policies regarding attendance, makeup tests, classroom conduct, and academic honesty. Explain these rules early in the course and emphasize the benefits of cooperation and consideration. Providing exceptions to any of the identified policies is a slippery slope that will generate more work for the faculty member and possible grievances from students who will challenge your fairness.