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!