Regardless
of whether you are teaching live in the fall or a hybrid class or using totally
distance learning, it is important to help your students get ready for a new
experience. Most of them are sitting at
home bored and scared. They have no idea
what to expect. Maybe worst of all, they
have no reason to believe it is going to work.
That is a problem that I don’t think many schools have yet addressed.
Therefore,
I am in the process of making a series of 3-5 short videos that I will email to
my fall students so they will know what to expect and why I am doing this. I have long argued that the number one factor
in becoming a good teacher is creating student faith in you. If they believe in you, they will do what you
ask no matter how complex the assignments might be.
Ask
yourself: What have you done to convince
your students they should have faith in you for the coming semester? I think that is a very valid question.
Last
week, I sent out my first video (the link is below) to help them see how I am
building an outstanding course for them for this fall.
A
lot of education begins with, “Read Chapter One in your textbook.” I think that is a problem. Students struggle to read the textbook and
often wind up feeling frustrated and stupid.
That is a bad way to begin each chapter.
The material is complicated and is often only understandable to someone
who has already finished the course. For
each new crop of students, textbooks can destroy self-confidence and kill their
interest in the topic. That’s no way to develop
any faith or enthusiasm.
Therefore,
for my classes, I created “Guided Reading” assignments to help the students get
through each section of the textbook effectively. I want them to arrive at the first class with
a basic understanding of the essential material. That is why they pay the money to buy the
textbooks. In most cases, that level of understanding will not
come from an unaided student reading. I
think it is naïve to assign a complex reading assignment and expect students to
gain much from it without some help.
I
developed these “Guided Readings” using PowerPoint slides because they are necessarily
sequential and anything that is presented to students sequentially has a better
chance of success.
Okay,
assume you are a college sophomore and you have signed up for my introductory
class this coming fall semester. I email
you this video. If I have done this
well, it should help you:
--Realize
that I do have an idea on how to make this semester work.
--Start
to see how the course is built (in our school’s Blackboard system).
--Feel
a bit of excitement about the upcoming semester. Maybe stop being quite so scared or uncertain.
Watch
the video and see if I have been successful at any of these three.
(If
you would like to receive a PowerPoint Reading Guide for a textbook chapter, send me an
email at Jhoyle@richmond.edu.)
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