Month: March 2011

March 8^st, 10^th, and 22^nd

On Tuesday, we talked about behaviorist which was great because students used Facebook to use what they have learned in class. Assessing what they are learning and connecting to their curiosity, Facebook is a great source to see how many students actually take an action to apply to the real world examples.

On Thursday, the TAs sat on seats with students and observed how students behaved during the class period. I actually thought many of the students were studious and taking notes and responding to Dr. Gurung’s lecture. However, when a student was asking Dr. Gurung a question, other students started to talk irrelevant topics, which I think it happens quite often. They were talking topics such what they did last weekend and what they are going to do during the spring break. I thought in my head that it would be very distracting if I were a student who is sitting around them, I would have felt very distracted and possibly annoyed.

On Tuesday, the 22^nd, I sat down like other students (embedded). As I thought of earlier, I could notice students around me talking to each other when Dr. G is not lecturing about the textbook material. Even though it would not affect others’ learning, it could be distracting to students who are around them time to time. Otherwise, when Dr. G is lecturing, they pay attention and take notes. I have also noticed that students are too busy trying to understand the material that they don’t take notes of examples even when Dr. G says to take notes of the given examples.

 

I would like to start this week’s blog with talking about the lack of motivation that seemed to be taking over the students this past week. At the beginning of class on Tuesday, it was apparent that the students were not thinking about learning, they had spring break on their minds.  I say this because a lot of the students were not taking notes and just seemed to be sitting in class aimlessly as the minutes ticked away both days of lecture. I do think it was a smart idea for Dr. Gurung to include an in-class activity on Tuesday because it made the students use the material that had been presented over the previous days instead of having it sit in their minds where they may have forgotten about it.

This class activity however did not go as smoothly as one would have hoped. We tried a new way to form groups; pairing up and completing the task then finding another pair of students and compiling the results.  I feel this was a bad idea because after working with your original partner you agree 100% on your answers then you introduce another set of answers and have to argue for why you think yours are right and not the others. The best group day we had was when Dr. Gurung just had the students to work with the 3-5 people around them; I think we should go back using this technique.

This brings me to Thursday’s class! This class was different than the rest because instead of observing from either the front or back of the class room Dr. Gurung mixed the TA’s in with the students which gave all the TA’s a new perspective. Going into this I thought my presence would have an effect on the students around me, but I was definitely wrong. It seemed my presence did not play any role in how the students behaved in class.  I had one student who could have cared less that I was there, he sat on his phone the entire class and did not take any notes except for a measly 4 lines and these lines looked like a key one would create for shortened words. I also noticed that the students are not taking notes on the examples given in class; they seemed to be more tuned in to listening to Dr. G talking about it instead of getting it down in their notebooks even when Dr. G noted that it would be very important to jot it down!  I also noticed that students lose interest during videos. This is when all the phones come out and the texting begins. Another interesting thing I noticed had to do with note taking; I noticed a sort of pairing off when it came to doing notes. This made me wonder if students make arrangements with friends to have one take notes one class and the other friend do it the next. If this is happening it also raises the question of how well the students are learning the material if they are not taking notes on it. Personally, I feel that students benefit from writing their own notes because they can put it in their own words and write down little notes in the column if they do not understand something, but this miss this opportunity when they have someone else taking their notes.

I did enjoy sitting among the students but I do think that next time we should have not only one TA at the bottom of the class room but one in the back. While sitting in class Thursday I did notice a student sitting in the back of the room in an empty chair instead of in a chair with the rest of the class, this would not have happened if a TA was in the back of the room. It’s important to have a TA back there because that’s where majority of the students come in late and having a TA up there would be beneficial because it would let the student know that it is not okay and it would get them into a seat.

Finally, I noticed that Dr. Gurung had done a little rearranging in his lecture to make sure he did not introduce any material that he thought would be too heavy. He did introduce the idea of operant conditioning with about five minutes left in class which I found odd instead of ending class, but then again we only have so many class periods left and Dr. G must use all the time given. With that said, Dr. G did introduce the concept but instead of talking about key figures behind it he just mentioned the key terms involved. This was a good move on Dr. G’s part because it allows the students to start thinking about the idea instead of having to master and remember the people involved with operant conditioning. Overall, it was a good week of class seeing that the students lacked enthusiasm, but let’s see how excited they are to back in the class room once classes resume after break!

 

While sitting in class this week it was obvious that it was close to spring break.  Not only where there more students sleeping in class, zoning during class, and lacking on note taking, there were less students there!  It must have been obvious for me as well, I took less notes on my observations 🙂  In class Tuesday, the group work did not run as smoothly as had hoped.  I realize that there would be a lot more papers to correct, but I can’t help but think it would just be easier for the students to find their own groups, at least 2 no more than 5.  Or something similar. 

Thursday’s class was very interseting to be sitting in the student seats with the students.  It truly is a different view than sitting in front of or behind the class.  I was paying attention to a lot of the students that were taking (or not taking) notes.  I noticed a lot of students simply wrote the answers to the examples, but not the examples.  I also noticed noone that wrote down the examples, and only a small handful wrote down the information that Dr. G specifically told them to write down.  Being a TA has allowed me to notice this, and knowing the type of class and how difficult some information may be for students to understand, it frusterates me knowing that they do not take very good notes.  On the other hand, I know from experience and looking at my own notebooks, I do not take good notes either.  I also write what is on the slides, unless the topic is exceptionally difficult.  It is difficult to expect more from the students when I do the same thing they do.  It is an interesting viewpoint that I have now as a TA.  I feel as though the students should do better than I do, but I can’t expect them to because I know what they are thinking.

While I was sitting in the class with the students in Thursday I realized that it was difficult to notice students walking in late, especially if they did not walk to the front of the class.  However, without a TA sitting in the back, the students did not find a chair to sit in by the other students, they simply sat in the unused TA chairs.  When I was sitting with the students it was very easy to notice the phones vibrating, the students texting, whispering, and students not paying attention or not taking notes.  Even though Dr. G worked very hard to get the class excited, and to participate, it was difficult to due to the lack of motivation which I am hoping is simply because it is so close to spring break.

There were a few things I did not fully understand while I was listening to lecture.  First, as I noticed the tone of the class, and the high amount of students missing, it seemed different that a difficult topic was presented before spring break.  I remember first learning about learning and found many parts confusing and difficult (although I did not have the extra TA help to explain).  I find it interesting that Dr. G would place the difficult topic so close to spring break, with the assumption that a large portion of the class would be missing.  This has a negative view because there are a lot of students missing the information, examples, and extra explainations.  The positive would be to further encourage the students to attend class, and that not all the information covered in class is easy to understand simply by reading the book.  I also realized that it seemed like Dr. G ran out of time at the end of class.  He quickly proceeded through the overview of operant conditioning, and although it is more common than classical conditioning, the concept may be still foggy to the students.  Also, by not fully explaining the topic, and not going over it more in depth, the students will quickly forget about it during spring break.  Finally, in the rush to finish the overview of learning, Dr. G did not explain the video clips.  Granted, the information was a review and the students should have understood the concept, he simply showed the video clips with no debriefing of information.  I felt as though the classical conditioning lecture was unfinished and the operant conditioning beginning was rushed.

It was a very interesting view being in with the students, and sitting with them it was difficult for me not to take notes or acitvely participate during the lecture as I was expecting the students to do.

On Tuesday Dr. G went over some of the exam. Explaining some of the trends and details. Like that most of the questions that were missed were textbook questions. And that they need to learn that there is a best answer,  it helps make the question harder. This day was also full of questions and comments. Attendance to be the same as it was before the test, around 205. Which is weird considering the test scores.

On Thursday there were a lot of people coming in late. Most of which had no good excuses. Attendance looked about the same again. In the meeting after a lot was discussed. We are setting up review sessions and study tables. It was also brought up how much of a test should be strictly textbook material. I thought it was interesting that the TA’s thought more of the test should be textbook only than the professor. Apparently we would be OK with a hard test. This could also be the reason why we are TA’s. We try hard at our studies. We also discussed the comment made about the student who left early but had an excuse. I understood that Dr. G  wanted to make a point that he had an excuse to leave since he makes comments on everyone else leaving early. It was somewhat necessary because of where the student was sitting. If you know you are leaving early you sit by a door not in the middle of the room.

We also decided on topics in the meeting. Attendence and Facebook are the top two.

I cannot believe how fast this semester is going. It is almost have gone. Crazy!!!

This week I am going to start off talking about attendance again because at the start of class Tuesday, Dr. G mentioned to the TA’s to stop the students who came in late and remind that being late to class is unacceptable and to try and be on time from here on out.  During Tuesday’s class we had at least 4 late students and had one student leave mid class, I found this shocking because all the students know, thanks to announcements early in the semester that these two things are unacceptable, yet they are being done. One student this week stuck out to me because he wanted to leave the middle of class Tuesday but Dr. G did not allow it and then on Thursday this same student came in almost 15 minutes late as if it did not faze him and walked right in front of Dr. G who was in the middle of lecture. Dr. G took this moment to not only call the student out, but to again reinforce that being late is not okay.

Secondly, attendance was pretty high for Tuesdays class and I believe that part of the reason for this was because it was the class after the exam and students probably knew it was going to be discussed, thus showing up for class. At the beginning of class Tuesday, Dr. G spent some time discussing the exam and how it was graded and how it does not curve because it hurts students more than helping them. He also briefly went through reasons for dropping questions and what questions most students got wrong; not surprisingly it was content that was from the book, which made me think of something! First off, I was not surprised by this information because it’s an intro course and many students probably think they do not need to read the material because it will be covered in class; wrong! Secondly, I thought about how can instructors make reading the course book more appealing? I personally feel there is not a way to make more appealing because many students see it as a time consuming task and again will rely on the lecture to get information and maybe just maybe they will look at the book if they do not understand a concept covered in lecture.

Which brings me to my next point, this past week’s material both covered in the book and discussed in lecture went nicely together. Dr. G mentioned several times throughout the lectures on both Tuesday and Thursday that certain material was covered in more detail in book; this being in the form of tables and charts in which he gave the figure numbers for along with what page they could be found. More specifically, Dr. G mentioned to rely on the book for Erikson’s stages of development to get the main stages and the crisis that goes along with each!  Dr. G also did a great job tying new material to past material that was learned prior to exam one and this is great to see because it keeps the information present for the students and lets them know what is important. It is also important to note that the students understand the emphasis on repeated information because it is a clue to what may be presented on the cumulative final come the end of the semester.

This week Dr. G also brought in some fun videos of his kids participating in the Piaget experiment. This was a good idea because not only is it tying information to real life examples, it gives the students in the class to repeat this experiment at home with children and in doing so it may help the students better understand and learn the material because its hands on.  Dr. G also brought in a Frisbee, rubber duck, pitcher and plastic/wood shapes which helped out with demonstrations in the discussion of Piaget’s stages of development. I personally feel that the more hands on a student can be with the material the better they can learn the material because it gives them a different way to understand and remember the information rather than just taking notes on it. Also, having in class demonstrations gives students a break from note taking. I feel this can re-engage a student because they are taken out of the routine of looking back and forth from their notebooks to the lecture screen and get their attention in a different way.

Finally I want to talk a little about the scholarship of teaching because I feel I have a unique chance to see different types of teaching this semester through a course I am taking; Phuture Phoenix. During our meeting on Thursday it really struck me when Dr. G had mentioned that some teachers seem to just go through the motions and others go above and beyond and look at the research and incorporate it into their teaching. As soon as that was said I had realized that there is a huge difference in teaching from a high school level compared to a college level! I do understand that once at a university it is more difficult, but I am a firm believer that having a good teacher at any grade is truly important. Through my field experience this semester I can say there is a huge gap between how teachers control a class room in a high school and a university setting which breaks my heart because all kids deserve excellent teachers and excellent teaching.