I went through a similar transformation (to computer projection), and I noticed a significant drop in my teaching evaluations. I have not looked the data on grades. Instead of having them download my lectures from my website (which they can still do), I gave them handouts that PowerPoint creates, with six slides on each page. I reasoned the same cause for my drop in teaching evaluations -- a lack of student attention in class. I also thought this would be a real advantage for the students. But still I had that drop in evals. To fix this problem (I was unwilling to give up on the electronic presentations), I created a duplicate of each lecture, but with blank spaces in place of key words on each slide. I made my handouts from these documents, and used the intact ones for class. Thus, students have every word I project on the screen except for the key ones, which are missing on their handouts. It is very clear that they are tracking my lectures now; they diligently write down those missing words, and borrow other students' notes for days they miss. With some necessary patience while the students write down the key words for each slide, my lectures are as smooth as they were before (or more!). I have also seen a rise in my teaching evals to the previous level. I am now totally addicted to PowerPoint presentations. Matthew P. Winslow Eastern Kentucky University -----Original Message----- From: Stephen W Tuholski [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2001 12:34 PM To: TIPS Subject: Re: chained overheads / portable media At SIUE, overheads seem to disappear with great frequency. My solution was to use some internal and external grant money to buy a laptop and a Boxlight projector. The laptop weighs practically nothing, and the boxlight projector weighs about 7 or 8 pounds. I can set up the projector and laptop in about 5 minutes, and it works well in any room w/ a projector screen. I purchased the cheapest boxlight projector I could find, reasoning that the high end models (they can reach well over 5k) would not do anything more for me in class than the $2k model I purchased. If you like to use Power Point, these projectors are really nice... unlike a regular overhead, you can show animations and movie clips (basically anything you can put on your laptop). On a related note, I have a question/problem for the group... Last year I decided to use Power Point for all of my lectures. One of the perceived benefits was that I could upload the power point presentations on my web page, allowing students to download them before class. I reasoned that students could use these downloads to follow along while taking additional notes. This sounded really nice, and I thought that if anything, grades would go up. Amazingly, grades seem to have dropped since I started putting the power points on-line. My explanation is that students simply download and study my notes, but they are paying LESS attention to me in class. Has anyone else had this happen to them? If this is the problem, do you suggest NOT putting the notes on-line? I am hesitant to do that, because the better students really like having them in advance, and they are using them the way I intended. Thanks in advance for your input, Steve **************************************************************** Stephen W. Tuholski Ph.D. Asst. Professor Dept. of Psychology Southern Illinois U. at Edwardsville Edwardsville IL 62026 Phone: 618 650 5391 Fax: 618 650 5087 http://www.siue.edu/~stuhols "Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so." - Bertrand Russell ***************************************************************
