Re:Laptops Are Great, But Not During a Lecture or a Meeting
by bsder on Monday November 27, 2017 @04:59PM
(#15791915)
This is simply professors acknowledging reality.
If I taught my class to those who "previewed the material" I'd be teaching to 1 or 2 students ... maybe.
In reality, the best students do exactly this.
Re:Laptops Are Great, But Not During a Lecture or a Meeting
by mikebenfield on Monday November 27, 2017 @05:54PM
(#15792433)
Fine, but then you are agreeing with me: most instructors do not expect their students to read material ahead of time and do not structure their classes as if that is the expectation.
In fact, in my experience it's not even usually possible to read material before the lecture because students are only given at best a vague idea of what specifically is coming next.
Re:Laptops Are Great, But Not During a Lecture or a Meeting
by bsder on Tuesday November 28, 2017 @03:48PM
(#15801402)
> In fact, in my experience it's not even usually possible to read material before the lecture because students are only given at best a vague idea of what specifically is coming next.
Really? That has not been my experience.
Every class I have taught had a detailed syllabus with chapter and page assignments. Generally, they were spot on until the class started getting behind.
For English classes, which book you need to have read is always listed.
Which classes would you be referring to?
Re:Laptops Are Great, But Not During a Lecture or a Meeting
by gowld on Monday November 27, 2017 @07:46PM
(#15793262)
If most instructors are failing at their job, that's a shame. There's no reason save ego for an instructor to assume that students only learn by listening to the instructor speak.
Re:Laptops Are Great, But Not During a Lecture or a Meeting
by ghaff on Monday November 27, 2017 @05:52PM
(#15792421)
That's probably true in typical STEM lecture courses. In case-study type MBA and law courses and in various humanities seminars, it's certainly different. I'm not sure how adaptable that is to STEM subjects at scale. (Though it does work 1:1 or 1:few there as well.)
> Its astonishing how many students resist this fact, even when it is clearly spelled out for them.
I've taken a lot of classes, I've been a teaching assistant for a lot of classes, I've observed a lot of classes, and I've never gotten the impression that the instructor expected the students to have already looked at the material. Certainly no one ever said that explicitly.
I will say that it is true that the handful of times I tried to structure my class differently and have students read material on their own before lecture, they were indeed resistant and it didn't go well. And I do think that would be a better approach. But my point is that this is overwhelmingly not what is generally expected of students, at least in my experience, mostly at state colleges in the US.