I have been particularly frustrated this past semester... students never seem to take notes. I've tried a number of approaches... including requiring note taking, and doing weekly notebook checks, but I feel this is a bit ridiculous for college-level work. Taking notes should be a given. And why should I have to make more work for myself, policing students.
Besides, when I did notebook checks, I'd say students averaged 1/2 page of handwritten notes per hour or hour and a half of lecture. Pitiful.
I do give some handouts, but I do not provide everything via handout as I feel the act of writing things down (or typing them) helps one learn. I wonder is this because students don't learn cursive any more? In which case, they sit at computer workstations, so they could type their notes. Do they know how to type? They could ask to record my lectures but they don't.
They claim they are "visual learners". Well, so am I, but I still take notes. How would they feel if I lectured/demonstrated without notes, meandering through the material at will, covering some things but not others? Clearly they don't remember things from one class to the next. Final projects were just turned in, and one student still couldn't perform a simple task (which consisted of choosing a command from an application menu) even though we had been doing it for every assignment for the past 4 weeks, and I'd showed this student many times. But I never saw her write it down. Or look it up on the Web?
What gives? Or am I just getting old and grumpy.
--Aca Deme
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