Another week has come and gone. Since the beginning of the semester, Dr. Gurung and I have been brainstorming about how to get the students to read assigned chapters from the book outside of class, and come to class prepared to go into a discussion. This is so students arrive with an understanding of the concepts, and class time can be reserved strictly for discussion and clarification of key ideas, which hopefully will enhance their learning experience. Today was the first day that this was truly accomplished. For the most part, students were engaged, curious, and talkative about the content that was being discussed. This is especially nice, since the content was on evolutionary psychology and physiology: two areas of psychology that many students do not look forward to studying. Additionally, students had their textbooks open to refer back to graphs for further clarification. We even heard from students who have been quiet thus far in the semester. Hopefully, as the semester continues, this can stay the trend.
Dr. Gurung uses time management very effectively. I feel that he spends an appropriate amount of time on each slide, a little less for graphs and charts that are available in the book, and a little more on difficult concepts. He also seems to know when to push students to answer questions, and when to pull back. Today, he asked a student a simple question about the minimum amount of time a woman has to invest in having a baby. After she didn’t answer “nine months”, Dr. Gurung rephrased the question at least five different ways, until he moved onto another student who was able to answer the question. He wanted to demonstrate that there is an incomplete evolutionary analysis, and that is because women have different stressors than men. I’m bringing up this example to illustrate two things. First, Dr. Gurung always engages the class when he is making a point. I think this is a good teaching tool because it gives quieter students the chance to be involved, while also keeping the other students on their toes during discussions. Second, it is always interesting when a student does not know how to answer a seemingly simple question. I think the reason for this particular student’s indecision was because she was caught off guard, and thinking too hard on a simple answer. Which leads me back to my first point on the importance of keeping students on their toes.
Dr. Gurung ended class today, as he ends all of his classes, on a cliffhanger. This demonstrates time-management skills of knowing what he wants to say, what he wants to get through, and how much time he wants to spend on each topic in class. The cliffhanger is never something anyone would lose sleep over, but it is enough to keep the students interested even after a Packer game.