Tomorrow’s Professor has an interesting story today (it will be #781 when it’s posted) that tells of a prof that went the extra mile and found that it may not have been the way that he wanted to go.
The prof in the story put in loads of extra time and content into his lectures, but then after talking with his students and seeing what sorts of technology they are looking to use and found:
- lectures should highlight the main points of assigned readings (saves students time taking notes)
- students like slides that tell them what to put in their notes
- images and videos to make the class entertaining
- full notes to be posted online
- exam review online
The article goes on to say that technologies that facilitate these demands are not really helping students “dig into” the information. I certainly agree with this to some degree, but only if you use something like PowerPoint to hand the course to students on a platter. The article then goes on to say that if you use tools to provide a twist or novel experience that is all you really need for technology:
Yes, I continue to use a variety of technologies in my teaching, but less so than a few years ago, for often the students can best be stimulated by sharing a good story with a twist or sketching a simple table or diagram with chalk. The criterion for bringing technology into my courses should always be: will this enable me to pose questions that better engage my students, spark their curiosity, and push them to think critically and, ultimately, to learn?
So interestingly enough for me, as much as I think the clicker thing is a bit of a scam, it is the only technology that really reaches out to the student in the face to face environment and allows for questions and a “push”. There are plenty of tools online for this (assuming the students don’t ignore everything but the basics in the course), but in the classroom, the “just enough” technology might be something as simple as a clicker – or the cell phone – used to ask a large group a question and get all the responses back.
Hopefully I’ll have time to follow this through later, I’ve got to run now.
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