Notes+and+such

Decided with the move I would start a new notes page.

Do we tell our students this in the syllabus? - this came from Frederick CC. FCC has a 2 credit course called Learning Strategies that teaches students how to study at a college level. More information about study skills, including time management techniques, test-taking and note taking strategies can be found at http://www.howtostudy.org
 * || A general rule is that for every hour spent in class, two hours of study time outside of class are required. However, this can vary depending on the specific requirements of a course. More important than how MUCH should someone study is HOW should someone study. Studying is a skill and if students have not developed that skill, they may still struggle regardless of how much time they study.
 * || A general rule is that for every hour spent in class, two hours of study time outside of class are required. However, this can vary depending on the specific requirements of a course. More important than how MUCH should someone study is HOW should someone study. Studying is a skill and if students have not developed that skill, they may still struggle regardless of how much time they study.

@http://www.uni.edu/walsh/linda7.html ||

Teaching is a challenging task. And with that trying to figure out what are the issues that affect quality teaching, we need to do some reflection of ourselves. Do you remember Miss Higgbee's class? What happened in the class the allowed you to learn? Maybe that is the class you did not learn the subject. Why? How about that professor that looked like Herman Munster? Yea, you know which one. He was the one that started the lecture at precisely 9am and ended the lecture @ 10.05 on the dot. But I remember the Japanese Religion and Philosophy class that was more than lecture but interactive with a lot of field trips.

Here is a link to the University of Chicago's Center for Teaching and Learning. Read through the material and see what you can find that might help that student that is struggling in your class. - UC CTL

++++++++++++= For years and depending on the school, many deans and professors have had their opinions on how to use PowerPoint in the classroom. I worked for a dean that believed it was the interpretation of some governing group that an instructor must present one slide for every 30 seconds of lecture = 2 slides a minute. So figure for a one hour class there would be 120 slides. It was interesting to sit in on his lectures as there was a lot of "junk" slides and if a student asked questions - that created a problem because he had his slides timed. Ok, this issue needs to be discussed further but right now a question has come up; when do you provide the student a copy of the slides? Is the class a traditional classroom, hybrid, or online? Do the slides cover the course material and will the slides have testable material? With a learning management system that provides the instructor a method of distributing the slides without printing, that will be a matter of opinion. Does the student show up with the laptop or iPad? Does the student take notes on the computer? Do the students take notes on the handouts? A side story: I was talking to a colleague that was questioning some procedure and I asked her if she had the slides from the conference we attended a couple of years back. That she did. The instructor would design his slides to have blanks and places to add to the material as he did not clutter up the presentation. Well the colleague has the slides in the binder but no notes. None. The particular item I was looking for was discussed and right there was a slide with some blank lines. Where are your notes, I asked her. Her response - I did not want to mess up the slides. When do you hand out your slides? Here are a couple of links to some research; one that states you hand out the slides after the presentation and a slide presentatin that gives some tips that will encourage the student to take notes -The Research & a slide presentation.

From BPS Research Digest - do we need to change the way we deliver our lectures? - read this and decide for yourself - [|Change my Lecture?]

~ //**What's your pedagogy**//? For some reason I think of the CapitalOne vikings as I ask that question. Another way to ask is how do you teach and follow up with how do your students learn... Dr. Lec Turas was one that limited students interaction in the class. He was the one who was all knowledgeable and the students came to class with a clean slate that he would fill with his lectures. Well, this carried through into his online class as well. What a terrible class. It was bad enough to have an instructor to just lecture but then in an online class you basically listened to his lectures - just audio with no slides to follow. Babababoring. And when a student tried to interject, well, good luck on your grade. In a paper titled, "How Constructivist Are We?" the authors identified that form of teaching more of a transmission focused process. The lecturer is central in the teaching process and the students are more passive in the learning process. The paper was written for a science journal so you can imagine what the primary audience is for this document - science teachers. Uhm, I remember a science course that was all lecture and very little participation. Kind of felt the need to just yank your eyeballs out so you could have something to dissect. Now the title of of the paper should give away what the desires of the authors are for teaching - constructivism. For one to be constructivist, the teacher has to realize that teaching and learning must be participatory. Less memorization and more collaboration. I was taking calculus and doing well until the 3rd week. Bam, the brick wall. Now it was primary lecture with the student then doing a problem. Mostly repeating what was written. Not wanting to fail the course I went to the instructor and asked some questions about how the theorems were used. "I don't know, I just teach the material." Time to withdraw from this class. The next class was a pre-calc and the instructor was a helicopter pilot. He would show how a theorem worked in a real world environment and then would allow us to provide some examples of where we could envision the formula. Failed the class but I had a better understanding of how the math worked. I believe that learning has to be an engaged event or action. The students have to have a part in the process. I was "subbing" a science class at a middle school when the notes were more for a transmission classroom. I knew just enough of the subject to make the lecture babababoring. I had some planning time I could readdress the material and allow more student interaction. Otherwise we would be doing word puzzles for most of the day. Apparently the students talked in great detail about how I taught them the subject, because it made a significant impact on their learning. If you want to learn more about constructivist teaching, read the article, "How Constructivist Are You" found in the Journal of College Science Teaching, written my Straits and Wilke. (Journal of College Science Teaching: Jul/Aug 2007; 36, 7; Proquest Education Journals, Pg. 58)

~ A student was overheard making a comment about the instructor's powerpoint presentation. Apparently the student was not all the impressed. Of course the student did not like the idea of having to take notes either so that could have been the majority of the problem. But when we talk about powerpoints, what kind of backgrounds or scheme do you use? Sometimes we need to slice things up. Here is a link to some templates that are colorful and interesting - Powerpoint Template 1; Here is Vicki's site - click here; Be Creative with this group

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