In addition to teaching literature and writing courses, every fall I teach a course that develops skills for student success. Recently we worked on note-taking. The exercise I used reminded me that when we give lectures, we need to make sure that our students connect with the material we’re presenting.
The exercise is this: Students watch a brief video lecture (I like Liz Coleman’s TED talk from a few years ago, “Call to Reinvent Liberal Arts Education”); they take notes and then compare and discuss their notes. However, what I discovered recently is that when my students watched Coleman’s brief lecture (18 minutes!) they began to get tired and stopped paying attention, the longer the talk went on. This really defeated the purpose of watching Coleman’s lecture, especially because she presents her most essential points toward the end of her talk.
My students missed the big point. They got information, but they couldn’t do with it what they needed to.
Continue reading “Helping students engage with lectures and other content”