Charu's Reading Notes #2

Week #2: Davis provided many ideas and strategies for teaching large enrollment courses.

A great tip that Davis provided in the reading was to decide whether to permit the capture of the lectures for later use or not (pg. 136). Along with the positive points, Davis also mentions the disadvantages of capturing the lectures as well. I believe nowadays many universities are making an effort to step toward using the technology to improve the instructional effectiveness and expand access to educational resources. I think adding this type of innovation in the classroom for the purposes of providing greater access to and understanding of course material is highly beneficial. Although the biggest disadvantage that Davis highlights in the text is by incorporating this kind of innovation in the classroom will directly affect the attendance of the students i.e. students would feel less likely to attend the classes when they’ll already know that they can access the study material online as well.

I totally agree with Davis on this point, but I feel that we can probably take an advantage of this strategy for instance, when we already know in advance about the possibility of tornado, blizzard or flood warning in Fargo—especially when we don’t want the students to miss out that particular lecture. I also think that lot of professors don’t want to adopt this kind of innovation because of the ease-of-use barrier. Many professors are not interested in being bogged down with learning and managing the complicated technology. However, if NDSU IT staff can provide detailed training sessions for teachers to help them overcome this barrier than this may really help the teachers to take the advantages of this innovation. I really want to listen to other people comments on the idea of incorporating the innovation of capturing lectures in the class.

The other useful tip, which Davis presented in the text, was to give the students an opportunity to apply the explanations they hear or read (pg. 139). After reading this strategy I feel I should modify some of my lesson plans to implement this tip certainly, which will help my students understand the complex concepts in an effective way.

For structuring a lecture, Davis highlights the significance of identifying what you most want your students to remember about the topic (pg. 141).  I would really like to know some of the methods that will help me in prioritizing the topics i.e. to help me in developing the course objectives of the class.

  

I always find the Lang readings/examples to be really useful. Lang has very well applied the practicality to all of his concepts. In the text Lang lists some of the very popular web-based learning management systems like Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Sakai and so forth. For my COMM 110 classes, till now I have been actively using the discussion boards on Blackboard but I think I should make more use of other tools of Blackboard as well. One of my professors instructed us to use Wimba pronto tool, which was really helpful in connecting with the classmates and teachers on the Pronto instant messaging system.

Furthermore, I really liked Davis thoughts on how to minimize the distance between the teacher and student (pg. 164), particularly the tip where Davis says to invite specific students to sit in the front row. I think I will implement this strategy in both of my sections as well. This strategy will really help me to get to know my students and which will eventually lead to lessen the distance between us.