Right now, I'm wrestling with making myself CHANGE from what I've been doing in my class (4 classes thus far) and what I want to be doing.
I keep telling myself, It's NOT lame to NOT lecture. It's hard for me not to prepare a lecture. I feel like I'm "cheating" if I don't make a lecture. That's wrong though...it still takes effort to lead a class even if I don't lecture.
What I'm planning for Monday is to do an activity with them from the CD that came with the book. The activity topic is on Genetics. I'm not an expert on Genetics. I'm sure I know more about the topic than the students, but the CD has nice illustrations and animations to show things that I can't. A picture is worth a 1,000 words, right? An animation must be worth 10,000.
I should use the tools that I have available to ME that will help my students the most, right?
They will become more engaged during the activity.
The other thing I'm planning on is to give them an outline of the chapter and have them "make the lecture." I'll split them up into ~10 groups (about 4 per group) and have them go through the outline (with the book and with each other) and start to make the power point slides. They can see what it takes to make a lecture.
What do you think? Should I? Should I not?
Would you hate me if I were your professor and did these things?
Did you like professors who lectured?
I was a good student and I don't mind lectures. I am still attending them as a professional. I enjoy someone who can talk at great lengths about a subject... I can learn from this type of interaction. I also go back to the materials that I need to help me figure out the missing pieces, and I don't mind doing that.
I have about 2 students who fall asleep... In my last class, one stayed awake... I tried to get them talking as much as possible... But I think I need to do activities... (Actually, I KNOW I need to do them, but the changing from lecture to more activity-based/constructivist is hard.)
I would love to hear your thoughts on this change I'm undertaking... (And then we'll return to our regularly scheduled Mommy-Blog.)
4 comments:
Some of your posts, really make me come out of my typical lurking... As someone who endured three years of schooling past my B.A., I can say that changing up a class so that the teacher is not constantly lecturing is a welcome change. Activities and group projects really can force students to be more involved in the material and learn it better than they would by listening to a lecture in every class.
- A
My babysitter HATES the activities in her PhD classes...but that's probably because they're all about sharing. It's kind of a wishy sounding psychology program. Yours sound useful.
Just don't make them fall backwards into each others' arms!
Hmm, I'm all for the interactice style classroom. It's a refreshing change most of the time. Lectures - depends on who gives them and their tone of voice. Monotone lecturers will soothe me into a deep sleep. Animated, excited lecturers who make the subject come alive are very cool and I listen with rapt attention and they usually leave me craving more info (that's the info-holic in me).
As for the powerpoint idea though...if I were the student and I got any hint of an idea that you were just using the students to do your work for you that would be very lame in my book. I know you're NOT doing that, but if I thought you were a new prof who didn't want to bother creating your own lesson plans and found a "sneaky" way to get us to do it for you, I'd think that was lame.
Also, from a student point of view, it always seemed to me that the profs put more effort and thought into class when they ventured away from the lecture. When they came up with creative ways to educate us, I loved it and felt that they were truly invested in the class and not just spewing out the same old lecturer they'd been giving for semester after semester.
So I say, go for the CD activity. Definitely use the tools you have available at hand!! And then sit back and gauge what you think the students thought of it. I bet they will all be awake. :-)
I'd love to be a student in your class! They are very lucky students! :-)
Most people don't learn easily from sitting and listening to someone else talk (even when they take notes). Learning in different ways makes it more fun and more memorable. In my more cynical moments I suspect that universities use lectures so much partly because they don't want learning to be easy.
At university I hated group activities so I wouldn't have been so keen on the second idea. Something like that but alone I would have been OK with.
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