Talk about a whirlwind!!! Turns out I had EXACTLY enough material to cover the full 2 and a half hours of my course today. Granted, it was the whole first chapter, but I think it went well!!!
It's a different experience lecturing, as opposed to leading a recitation. I'm used to the students interacting with me. Today, all 20 of them just sat there. With one or two questions thrown in. It was bizarre.
It was definitely a roller coaster though. I thought I was going to run out of material at the beginning when it only took me 10 minutes to go over the entire course in general. Then in the middle I thought I wouldn't finish, so I sped up a bit. Then back up to not having enough material. I guess I planned it out just right though! I had to have enough material to get me til 3:30, and I finished at 3:28. Not too shabby for a first timer!
As for my actual lecturing, I need to tighten things up. There were a few minor slip ups, but my students were actually paying attention and got the words out for me, so that was nice. I hope that means they were really thinking about the material while I was covering it! I get to do it again tomorrow. I'm exhausted after just one day!!
4 comments:
I am SO happy it's not just me getting weirded out by the lack of interaction during lectures. My first reaction when I started lecturing was to attribute it to culture shock (my background is in Sweden and Germany) and then to work frantically hard on making my students respond.
I'm still waiting for the evaluations for this past course to come in, so alas I won't be able to tell you how it turned out for me.
It is hard to get students to interact in class, but it can be done. Try asking a lot of questions, even if they're really easy things (okay class, now we need to add 2+2, what's that?). At least it gets them in the habit. Another really good piece of advice I once got is to wait even longer than you think is necessary to get an answer, even if you think you've waited long enough. Your idea of time is very different from theirs. Also, if you get in the habit of answering your own questions too soon, they get in the habit of just waiting for you to tell them the right answer rather than trying themselves.
Mikael, it's definitely not just your students! I've heard this several times. What kinds of things did you try during your lectures?
Greg, I have an easier time in recitation as far as getting the interaction. I was told that lectures are different in this respect, so it might be me as well. I'm thinking of bringing in some of the tools that have been successful in my recitation sections. The term is till very new, they could be getting used to the subject as well.
(sorry for not checking back for so long since I commented - mea culpa)
What I did first and foremost was to actually get in touch with the Teacher Development services on campus: the Center for Teaching and Learning. I had one lecture filmed, and gave up half a lecture for a midterm evaluation; getting a peek at what my students perceived as problematic.
And that all turned out a few things worth absorbing, but much more importantly opened up the communication channel from me to the (geology) professor in charge of helping STEM lecturers develop their teaching style - and thus getting from her a number of good suggestions for improving the things I was lacking.
One thing she pointed out - which ties in with what Greg said here - is that in order to give students time to think, you REALLY need to give them TIME to think. 30 seconds of complete and utter silence feels excruciating to insert into your lecture, and you'll grow impatient after about 8 seconds; but if you push it (by all means use a clock), then after about 20 seconds, that discomfort gets noticed by all the students, who suddenly realize that you really DO expect them to participate right at this moment.
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