I've been posting my overheads online for a couple of years now and have
done just as Michael Kane suggested in his post. Each successive class I
have reduced the amount of detail on each slide. Now, I often have some
sections of my overheads that are merely skeletons, where I fill in the
major heading, but leave blanks for the subpoints. This approach has had
some extra benefits of encouraging the class to ask questions. So if I'm
lecturing on a topic and my overhead lists that there should be 3 subpoints
and a student only has two and I change the topic, they tend to ask. At
that point I ask them what they have and can re-explain (often they thought
two ideas were just one, and I end up being more clear about the
distinctions). The skeleton approach can put students off it it's totally
skeleton form. Why bother to print it out ahead of time if it doesn't have
any content? It's been a trial and error process and now I have a feel for
what works for me.
One other thing I should mention is that I try my best to explain that the
webnotes are inadequate, they are merely available to help with
organization and allow me to move the class at a faster pace. I then try
to explain some ways that these notes are helpful. I point out that there
is a lot of space around each line, to give the students room to
personalize the notes (which usually leads to better recall and understanding).
I have found that this approach (a strong explanation and warning at the
beginning, and minimal, but useful web notes) very useful. As I mentioned,
it does speed up the class. It can increase student questions. Students
like them and have tended to use them correctly in my more recent classes
(or I'm just deluding myself;-). I usually get good responses on my course
evaluations about the notes, and the comments tend to recognize that the
notes alone are inadequate, but they reduce busywork (e.g. recopying a
verbatim definition) and allow for more cognitive work on the part of
students (e.g. inserting their own personal example of a concept, or a
classmate's example).
Keep it up,
Don
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Donald J. Rudawsky
University of Cincinnati
Dept. of Psychology
PO Box 210376
Cincinnati, OH 45210-0376
513.558.3146
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://homepages.uc.edu/~rudawsdj
