Commencing Countdown. Engines On.

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Commencing Countdown. Engines On.

It is rather late in the season for me to address this now but maybe by posting about it I will remind myself to try out some of these ideas next year (<ominous clouds/dark horizons>assuming there is a teaching next year for me</ominous clouds/dark horizons>). Over at casting out nines Robert has made a few points about how he begins the teaching year, for example, spending about ten minutes on course structure before diving straight into the material - something that I could afford to do more often- rather than spending most, if not all, of the first session telling the students what to expect. As one of the commenters points out, this approach has to be differentiated depending upon the level of the students, more support and gentle introductions for first and second years versus diving straight in for the third, fourth, and postgrads. Screen casts to illustrate aspects of course management are an interesting idea, something that I think I will definitely try out with Araucaria next year, as, year on year, students have complained about how unintuitive the interface is. With course management though I don't think that even first year computing students need a screencast to introduce them to using wordpress which is how I do all of my course management. What is most interesting, and something that I hadn't really considered, is the idea that many students form their lasting impressions of the module in the first few moments, and that these impressions stay with them throughout the semester. Managing those impressions, and hence the expectations and feelings of the students in the first few moments could, as a result, have a large effect on how smoothly the rest of the module runs. Finally, I like the idea of using a list of assignments to give the students a constant stream of activities and things to do. Mostly, outside of labs and lectures, I have the feeling that many students don't do anything related to their modules. With the advent of the new attendance registers in the school many more students are turning up regularly to their lectures but I am not sure of how much additional attention is being paid to course materials. I have always assumed that most students were at least as interested in the subject matter as me and that they would therefore be reading the required texts and doing their own background readings. In all likelihood, except for official assessments and exams at the end, I know that there is very little actual set work for my modules. I don't mark lab exercises I just expect them to be done as I know that they are essential to being able to both complete the courseworks and perform successfully in the exam. Maybe what I could do is start setting more work, more specific readings, and more exercises so that the students can engage in deliberate practise from an earlier point in the module rather than relying on trying to stay awake during lectures and cramming shortly before the exams.

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Commencing Countdown. Engines On.