The Week Before 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.