Last week I held study tables.  I wasn’t expecting anyone to show up, but low and behold one of the students from my pod did indeed show up.  She wanted to go over material because she received a D on the last exam.  I asked about the first exam and she said she got a B on the first exam, but the review session in class helped a lot, and she studied more.  With the last exam she didn’t study as much on her own, and didn’t attend a review session.  I asked about learnsmart, and she said that she hasn’t been using it as much as she should.  This exam she plans on using learnsmart at least 5 minutes a day to help study before the exam gets here.  We then moved on to the personality material we had covered up to that point (everything but psychodynamic).  I first asked if there was anything in particular, and she said just kinda everything sounded the same.  So from there I helped her make a flow chart separating out all the different characteristics of each.  She really seemed to like the idea, and catch on.  I’m hoping helping her with this visual representation will help her to be more successful on the next exam.

What the student that is in my pod said, along with what everyone else that I contacted in class, I’d say learnsmart is being under-utilized, but yet students know they should be using it.  So what’s the hold up?  If so many students say they should use it, that they find it helpful, and that it is fun, why not use it like it’s intended?  Is it because they aren’t used to having that resource available in other classes?  Because there are no strict due dates?  I think it would be interesting to do a survey of this at the end of the semester too.  Just to get some more organized data on this.

Yesterday attendance was low.  It was snowing, and I do know areas around GB did get 6-7 inches of heavy snow.  My friend who drives in from Suamico had trees down in her driveway which caused her to be late to school.  I think the weather was definitely a factor, especially since some commuters do drive a long distance.  I think another possible factor is the fact that spring break came earlier than in the past this year so students might start becoming fatigued.  I know I had two exams this week, and was wiped most of the week.

After all the effort put into a lecture I can see how it would be disheartening for students to no show.  With the group activity attendance was both positively and negatively reinforced.  Positively for the students who came (adding points to increase attendance), negatively (taking away the opportunity of point for the students who did not come to increase attendance).  I think this is the best of both worlds.  We want students to want to come to class, not to come to class for a grade.  There should be some reward for coming to class.  Is doing better on the exam than those who didn’t come a reward?

It’s hard to expend so much effort into making class better, more interesting, more engaging, more educational.  But at the end of the day, as hard as it is.  The goal of education is learning.  If some students learn better from a book than a lecture and can still pull an A or B on an exam, is it really beneficial for them to be in class?  The one loop hole in this is that part of the lecture is gaining information, practice, and experience with the subject material.  Part of the exams are from the lecture as well, so truly motivated students will come even if they may feel that they learn better (or can learn just as much) from the book.  Though I believe truly (not perceiving that one is) learning better from a book, is a rare if not non-existent occurrence.

At the end of the day professors, and TA’s alike want students to want to come to class just as they want students to want to learn the material.  If steps like pedagogical research, keeping up to date on current research in the field, making lectures engaging, incorporating different learning styles into each lecture, varying the pace and content of class time have already been taken it’s hard to say what else could be missing.