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
I tell them, "This is SCIENCE. You need to TAKE NOTES. If you do not TAKE NOTES, you will get BAD GRADES." And I tell them this over, and over, and over again.
ReplyDeleteI know that repetition is a teaching technique for 10-year-olds. The problem here is that disturbingly many of today's undergraduates have the minds of 10-year-olds. You can thank the chronic electronic overstimulation for this.
I do a lot of reading to them, too, in much the same way "Charlotte's Web" was read to me when I was 10. This is necessary because they simply WILL NOT read on their own, no matter what the carrot or the stick. Sometimes it works: it's certainly better than nothing.
Open the hangar, here comes the airplane! They want it spoon-fed. Give them PowerPoints. Let them view them on their laptops. Heaven forbid they should annotate the slides or take any active role in their education. They've really become potted plants. The only sign of life I get out of them is when I catch them texting in class.
ReplyDeleteHow can they be "visual learners" if they don't learn anything? I am blown away too. Next week will be the final in a very basic English class, and many students are still iffy on what subjects and verbs are....
ReplyDeleteI give the ppts that come with the textbook, but with all of the words and equations deleted - just un-captioned figures. I don't hand them out, but I put them on Blackboard so if they want to print them out to write on in class, they can. Some do, some don't. Those that do often come to review classes with some of the better of those that don't, then they take over and I get praised for holding review sessions, even though the students wind up doing the review with me as a spectator.
ReplyDeleteBy the middle of the semester, all of the ones just ambitious enough to show up for a review class, are taking notes because they figured out how those that did all along, were doing so well.
And the throngs of deadwood... I worry less about them.
Can one be a "kinesthetic teacher", and whack people round the head when they need it?
ReplyDelete