Re: "lecture preparation": a new form of active learning?

Brian,

I wouldn't doubt that we would find ourselves in agreement on most points.
As you were kind enough to show where your point comes from I can see why we
appear to disagree on points.  The classes I taught were in the order of 7
to 35 students.   If I had to lecture to 100 to 150 students, then I would
have to move to a different method,  which would probably include releasing
more lecture notes, having discussion groups, etc.   In essence, you are
trying to get your classes to where mine were, enlightening us both along
the way. I will not debate the wisdom of that.  I am a strong believer in
small instructional groups to allow for great interaction.  It forces each
person to use the material, instead of just trying to soak it up.  Mastery
comes from use.

As far as note taking during class goes, I'm also in doubt of its value.
Most of the material is in the book anyway, and the students are supposed to
study that.  If we are mostly in the business of showing connections and
making it more personal, then I would think that active participation would
be of much greater value than blindly writing things down.  Since I can't
read my own handwriting,  I don't think I've actually read my notes very
often, yet I still managed to gain a certain mastery of the subjects.  If
the lecture notes were handed out prior to class, with some room for
students to do a bit of work on them as needed, it would be a bit better.
Time presently spent attempting to transcribe the teachers thoughts could be
spent working with the material.

Michael




"Brian Harvey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> "Herman Family" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]/without_any_s/> writes:
> >Generally when I lecture I try to demonstrate the material at hand, show
how
> >it relates to the rest of the entire world, and show how to look at it to
> >understand it more easily.  I also push the students to look at the many
> >different connections to make between points in the book.
>
> This was in response to my
>
> >>   My idea about lecturing is that there is generally *too much*
> >> information in the book for the students to see the big picture, and
> >> that's my job in lecture -- steering them through the forest.
>
> Sounds like we agree more than we disagree.  I provide notes
> mainly because I don't want my students writing during lecture;
> when I was a student I never took notes because I find that I
> can't really think and write at the same time.  But if a student
> prefers to skip the lecture and just read the notes, because s/he
> doesn't get a lot of benefit from the question-and-answer aspect
> of lecture, I don't get upset about it.
>
> When we talk about stopping lecturing (still mostly just talk),
> part of the idea is that we would instead spend our time offering
> discussion sections, or being in the lab sections along with the
> TAs, etc.  So the students would get more opportunity to interact
> with us in small groups.  (Our lecture sections are 100-150 students
> in the upper division, and several hundred in the lower division.)