Timing really is everything when dealing with classes (especially a large class). Dr.Gurung seems to have amazing timing. Some examples would be how his lectures come at the perfect time for his examples. The super bowl examples and the love examples came at great times. The super bowl examples came right after the super bowl and the love (attractiveness) examples came right before valentines day. Also he seems to know how to end class right before 12:20. He even knows how to get most of the 252 students to pay attention. This must take a ton of practice and a few years to get the hang of it because I will tell you doing the review session last Thursday was not what I thought it was going to be.
I had the whole review session planned out in my head and I thought about the possible things that could go wrong (computer not working, no chairs or tables etc.) However I did not think about how the students reaction to the review session would be. First most people looked like they did not want to be there and they tried very hard not to participate. I am not sure if this was due to the fact that the review session was not in the format that would have been most helpful to them, or because of some other factors.
First I tried to have them answer questions individually (which was like pulling teeth). That did not work very well because only the same 5 people kept answering (mostly because they probably felt bad for me). I also tried to bribe the students with candy(got a little more people involved but did not last that long). So finally I put them into groups and made each group answer a question. This seemed to work the best and maybe for the next review session for part of it I will give them questions to answer in a group and then discuss why they are right/wrong.
Besides for everybody looking so alive on Thursday I also had a problem with people arguing about the right answer. After about 5 minutes of arguing the student just gave up but still insisted that he was right(even while other students tried to explain the answer). I felt as if I was not explaining it properly even though I tried to do it in a couple of different ways. The student did apologize after the review session which was nice but I was still upset. I wonder how professors do it everyday?
I hope the next review session goes a lot better because a ton of things seemed to go wrong during this one. My timing was off, the class was let out too early, the students did not seem engaged and I was completely frustrated by the end of the session (however I did not show that to the students). Before the next review session I will ask for some input from the students to see what they would like to do during the review session so they feel most prepared for the exam.