Entries Tagged with “large lecture”
Describe your approach to facilitating student learning in smart classrooms.
In terms of using the technology in ENS 280, the 500 student classroom, for the more traditional aspects of the lecture what I would do is—and let me briefly describe the setup of that room, of ENS 280, for those of you who aren’t familiar with it. The way it’s set up is that there are two projection boards where the PowerPoint slides could go on, on either side of the front of the auditorium. And then in the middle is another board where I could use the overhead projector to project whatever I wanted to write on that overhead.
And, the way I use the [technology in ENS 280] to its advantage is that in the PowerPoint slides what I would do is I would show PowerPoint slides of pre-made slides with key concepts and I would use the Smart Sympodium, which is a pen that allows me to write over these PowerPoint slides and I would highlight key points and write key concepts, [and] make sure that the students understand what the key concepts are in each of the slides.
And instead of moving on to the next slide—because I think the danger in using PowerPoint is that a lot of times speakers go a little too fast for the audience when they use PowerPoint—so instead of immediately going to the next PowerPoint slide, what I would do is I would walk over to the overhead projector and write down other key concepts, that I didn’t have the space to write down on the PowerPoint, and that allows the students to catch up in writing down their notes, and also to feel, to give them a little breather in having the time to process all the information. Because a lot of times in a chemistry lecture, the information that’s being given out is very dense and it needs time for the students to be able to process that, and so that’s the approach that I’ve been using, that I felt has been helpful for the students.
— Hong-Chang Liang, Chemistry
Describe your approach to facilitating student learning in smart classrooms.
One of the things I notice in my time teaching in ENS 280 is that students in large lecture courses—I teach two 500 student intro to psych classes—can become relatively passive in their learning pretty quickly. And so what I’ve tried to do is leverage the tools in the classroom as a way to engage them more during class to help them be more active in their learning. I guess the overall goal is to move them away from a situation where they are simply transcribing notes off a PowerPoint slide and more thinking about what we’re talking about, maybe going over some examples with them, that sort of thing, to help them engage more with the content.
— Mark Laumakis, Psychology
What factors contributed to your choosing that approach?
A big thing during the summer was identifying student passivity as a major undesirable condition, as a major problem in these large lectures, and then trying to find ways to leverage the technology in the classroom to overcome that, to address that issue, and the concept check questions are a perfect example of how I try to do that. It sounds relatively simple, but it ends up being pretty powerful, and sometimes those little things can make a pretty big difference, I think.
— Mark Laumakis, Psychology
Describe your approach to facilitating student learning in smart classrooms.
One of the things I try to do in these large student enrollment classrooms is first, try to earn an audience. They’re not science majors, I’ve got to get them interested in the topic. So one of the things I do is every piece of equipment that’s in the room—I use it. Not in a pattern, but irregularly so you never know each day exactly what’s going to happen. The message is coherent, but the media change throughout in a pattern that doesn’t reproduce from day to day.
The way I choose the equipment really depends on the topics. First, what equipment is in the room, I have learned how to use it—some of them have been new to me. Once I know they exist, now I’m looking for the best thing available. Let’s take hurricanes as an example. I find this geophysical fluid dynamics laboratory, here they have real imagery of the insides of a hurricane. Well, what does it take to run them? It takes a PC, then I use a PC. I try to find the best visuals I can in a topic, and some of them are restricted to only one kind of equipment, and that determines the pattern. The material determines the delivery mode.
Everybody’s used to PowerPoint. We familiar now hearing the lectures of “Death by PowerPoint”—you got to do something different, be a bit original, try to find pieces of equipment or things that they’re not used to. I try to show imagery that’s new to hold their attention. If it’s the same old things they already know, then they’ll tend to walk out of the class, to be blunt. They’re anonymous in a large lecture hall, you’ve got to hold their interest and you’ve got to do that by doing things that are new and different for them. The trick is finding those things that are on the topic, because remember, they’re only to accentuate and get across the material.
Finding resources really is the biggest trick. Not so much that they’re scarce these days, but there’s so darn much. So I’ll look at things, like I subscribe to Science and Nature, and I see what they recommend each week. I listen very carefully to some of my colleagues; I listen to Eric Frost, and other people who are on top of a lot of these topics, and I pick up tips from them. And you just kind of have the radar out at all times trying to sense where something might be interesting, give it a quick look, see if it brings something into the classroom that will capture interest and help further understanding.
— Pat Abbott, Geology
What factors contributed to your choosing that approach?
Through the first half of my career here at San Diego State University, I was working in classrooms where you can’t really squeeze in more than 50 or 75 students. You have a one-to-one dynamic then; you know the names of all the students in the class, and you have that kind of interchange. As soon as you go into the two-story, large lecture hall—when I took my same approach in there, at first my feelings used to get hurt all the time. Students would just get up and walk out. What I did in the other classrooms did not work in the large lecture hall. Thus, I became very motivated to find ways to interest them, and one of the things that’s been the biggest help to me is this rich range of electronic media where I can kind of appeal to the “MTV Generation”, if you will, not by chopping up the message, but by having the message be coherent and logical, and then chop up the media that deliver it as a way of engaging and holding attention.
— Pat Abbott, Geology
Have you told colleagues or others about your approach? What interest/reaction have you received?
I do Tuesdays and Thursdays for the large lecture halls, that’s the 75 minute lectures. I do a different coat, tie and shirt each day of the semester. I don’t say a word about it, it’s just part of the overall richness of the mix. I have colleagues derisively insult me, use terms like “edutainment.” And I thought about that, “Edutainment? I like that. I like that, I adopt that term, thank you.”
I use it to describe myself now, and that is the trick: it’s not entertainment, I never tell a joke, I never tell a little story for “entertainment,” there has to be some teaching message, some pedagogical point to it. Now that’s the tricky part—you try to be “entertaining” and be on the topic at the same time. I primarily use it with lots of visuals, using all the media, I do it by being excited about the topic, physical, walking around the room.
I am absolutely blown away by the number of my colleagues who go into that room and say “Oh, I don’t need the wireless microphone.” My words to them are “Amateur, rookie, you are not utilizing the potential.” It’s inconceivable to me that a person is not using the wireless microphone. You’re now free to roam around the room, and you can drop your voice down low if you want to emphasize some point. You can raise it high, you can get the full value of all the intonations and abilities of the human voice, having that wireless microphone on. Well, I’m distressed to see that so many people don’t use that and are proud of the fact they don’t. I think you’re not maximizing your own potential.
— Pat Abbott, Geology
How does the feedback you've received match up with your observations and/or expectations for the impact and success of your approach?
How I interact with the large auditorium was a learning experience. At the beginning, when I took the same approach that I did in the small classroom it was not good. But you observe, you painfully observe, you don’t take things personally. You watch them, and see what happens. I would never run a whole video. You start watching, and I look at the clock. If I run a video clip, a portion of a video, you watch the time, and you start seeing, “Oh, oh, how many minutes am I into this? Oh, oh, we’ve gone six minutes and now somebody’s just walked out?” You start noticing the pace of it go faster, you compare the quality of the video, and you just start learning these things over time. A video clip, one continuous thing like that, can’t be more than several minutes long. If I’m gonna run one where I really needed to go, ten, eleven or twelve minutes, I tell them in advance, “Now this one is ten, eleven, twelve minutes. Stick with it now, it might drag a little bit, but there’s a great thing at the end, that’s why we’re going the full twelve minutes.” I even apologize in advance so that they know what’s coming. They can look at the clock themselves, and know it’s almost over to go to the next part.
Patience is short among this generation of students. I really like this generation of students, I like them a lot better then the group that went through before them. But, labeling some things in advance about what’s coming up to prepare them is a big help. It’s trial and error. You’ve got to try it yourself, observe, and see what works and then consciously change your approach.
— Pat Abbott, Geology