There has been a lot of different things going on in class during the past few weeks. The biggest change for the TAs is that a few of us now sit in with the students. I really think it helps us see more of what is going on in the classroom because we are right next to them instead of watching them from the front or the back of the room. It has been interesting to see the difference between the front of the classroom and the back of the classroom. For the most part it seems as though the front part has much more diligent note takers compared to the back. One of the major things that I noticed aside from the difference of front and back is that students tend to only take notes from the powerpoint and not write down anything that Dr. Gurung actually states during class. I feel like a lot of the things he says they should be writing down so when they go back in their notes they will be able to remember it a little bit more. Another thing that I found very interesting is that one of the students I sat next to was working on other homework during the lecture. Granted he didn’t work on it for very long but I thought that it was strange that even with a TA next to him he still did other homework.
Attendance (signing in) is another new thing that was started lately. The first day was pretty interesting because one girl wrote down her friend’s name that was going to be late. She did tell us about it once she heard us talking about it. I think that it will be interesting to see if taking attendance will affect the attendance rates of the class in the next few weeks. Last weeks attendance was low because of a campus housing situation so it will be interesting once we get another attendance count to compare it to this week. When we took count before spring break and after I found it suprising that the numbers stayed right around the same area. Spring break didn’t seem to affect class attendance at all.
We have started study tables. So far nobody has come to any. I would like to know whether the students have other classes or work going on or if they don’t feel they need any help. It would be nice to see a few students take advantage of this time. I had one girl talk to me in the hallway. She just wanted to talk about the class and tell me what she thought about it. It was nice to hear her side of the story and what she did and did not enjoy about the class. I haven’t been getting any e-mails from any students for awhile now. Out of a class of 200 some I expected to hear from more of the students but I understand that not all students feel the need to talk or ask the TA questions.
Tomorrow’s lecture is about motivation. It will be interesting to see how students take this topic since it relates to everybody especially students. Reading through one of the parts of the motivation chapter in “Teaching Tips” made me think about the students that contacted Dr. Gurung about missing the exam and never actually came out and said that he had made a mistake. It is sad to see that according to the book he will be less motivated on the upcoming material. I can imagine that would be very frustrating for any teacher to deal with that because you want them to learn and be able to help them but they are just too many people to be able to help them all and the students is at the point where it is up to them to take control of the situation.
This point in the semester is interesting to me because it seems like more students are comfortable with raising their hand and contributing to the lecture. Especially in the last class when students were asked to name there most recently played songs. Quite a large number of people raised their hands and it wasn’t the same people that usually contribute.
It is only a couple weeks before many students start getting ready for their finals. We will be able to see if the upcoming final will cause more people to take advantage of the study tables and e-mailing the TAs. We will also be able to learn a little bit more about attendance. The group I am in for our project paper will be researching how facebook affects learning so hopefully we will be able to give a little more insight into that topic in the upcoming weeks.