Worst Class Ever!
I am preparing for the worst class ever tomorrow morning. I assigned a paper for the students to read. It is a difficult paper but I tried to define the terms in more general language so they would get the gist of it. They are not getting it. Not only that but they are getting confused early and giving up before even figuring out the point of the paper.
Of course, this only pertains to the less than half of the class that has looked at the assigned paper.
Web-based-learning-tool lets you track who and when people look at things! Who knew!?! It is like being a blogstalker* of your students homework habits. This feature makes me want to specifically call on the students who probably** didn't read the paper during our discussion tomorrow. Is that horrible? Do I care?
I should have assigned a summary of the paper or told them there was going to be a short quiz on it or something. Bah. At least I know to prepare more of a lecture on the paper to fill in all the blank stares....
*Hi blogstalker! Hope all is well!
**They could have had a friend print it out for them if they study together or something. Not looking at it is not a 100% guarantee they didn't read it.
UPDATE: Class actually went alright. There were a number of students who had read the paper despite not downloading it. The students that did read it had important and thoughtful comments. The rest had priceless 'oh shit' looks on their faces. We didn't make it through the entire reading so maybe more will have read it by the time we continue on Friday...
Of course, this only pertains to the less than half of the class that has looked at the assigned paper.
Web-based-learning-tool lets you track who and when people look at things! Who knew!?! It is like being a blogstalker* of your students homework habits. This feature makes me want to specifically call on the students who probably** didn't read the paper during our discussion tomorrow. Is that horrible? Do I care?
I should have assigned a summary of the paper or told them there was going to be a short quiz on it or something. Bah. At least I know to prepare more of a lecture on the paper to fill in all the blank stares....
*Hi blogstalker! Hope all is well!
**They could have had a friend print it out for them if they study together or something. Not looking at it is not a 100% guarantee they didn't read it.
UPDATE: Class actually went alright. There were a number of students who had read the paper despite not downloading it. The students that did read it had important and thoughtful comments. The rest had priceless 'oh shit' looks on their faces. We didn't make it through the entire reading so maybe more will have read it by the time we continue on Friday...
Labels: teaching
posted by DancingFish at 9:40 PM
6 Comments:
* Dandy thanks. Went to the aquarium the other day...thought of you
Yikes! I'm off to sign onto my web-based-learning-tool so that I can click on everything. Look teacher, I've been trying!
:-)
BS1- Fun! You need to come visit all of us!
Nadine- It is definietly not a perfect system and I doubt teachers really use it to gauge who is dong the work (there were at least 4 people who contributed that according to the tool hadn't looked at the reading). It is helpful though because I prepared a lecture just in case my plans for a discussion failed!
The pop quiz can be our friend!! I threaten them at the beginning of the semester, but I've rarely had to pull one out, and when I have, I don't "really" use the grade...just let the students bask in their not having read what they ought.
I'm going to be in town for a show in October. Perhaps we shall meet (Oddityeffect and Ryguy are in on it)
Grreat reading this
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