At 11:33 AM 3/20/01 -0600, Stephen W Tuholski wrote:
>(snip)
>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.
Steve, I've heard this complaint, independently, from a number of
colleagues using PowerPoint
notes in their undergraduate classes. I wonder whether you might consider
making your overheads
more spare. I post outlines of my lecture notes on the web, and students
print them out to use
for note-taking purposes. However, these outlines are truly outlines,
intended only to help students
see/use the organization of my lectures. To get the content, they need to
be in class to fill it in.
In any case, if this problem is as widespread as my personal experiences
are indicating of late,
someone needs to do a study on it.
-Mike
************************************************
Michael J. Kane
Department of Psychology
P.O. Box 26164
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, NC 27402-6164
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
phone: 336-256-1022
fax: 336-334-5066
