Hold the Front Page

For a couple of weeks I’m holding the fort for the editor of Behind the Spin. So, of course I’m wearing the visor, those strange metal bands around the elbows of my shirt and slamming the table with my fist demanding that I have a story worthy of the front page by midday – Goddamit!

Actually I’m composing some very nice emails to a whole load of people who would like to submit an article for the next issue, but I’ve written before about my vivid imagination.

I’m also reading some back issues of the magazine and an article by Alison Theaker in February 2005's issue caught my eye. Entitled ‘How to keep students interested,’ she advocates Charles Bonwell’s technique of stopping lectures every 8 to12 minutes and allowing students to compare notes. Apparently, because lecturers talk at a rate of 120-240 words per minute and the average student can take down notes at just 20 wpm, we are bound to miss something. Taking a peek at what your neighbour has written can help you fill in the gaps.

Which all seems like perfect sense until I looked back at some of the notes I’d taken in lectures.

Does: ‘Dog food’ underlined ten times, a pattern of randomly coloured cubes, the date: 12 April 1967 surrounded by a fluffy cloud shape and the calculation 102 – 123, (which I think related to the state of my bank account at the time) really going to help anyone remember what Derrida said about logocentricism?

I guess it’ll work for some people. And stopping every now and then to let what you have just heard get past ‘the voices’ organising the other parts of your life is a good idea.

Interestingly the article continues:

‘Bonwell also suggests using a mid-term evaluation. At the end of a seminar about 6 weeks into the semester, ask the students to split into groups and agree on three things that they like about the teaching on the course and three things that they would like to change. The problem with most evaluation is that it is done at the end of the semester, so the students on the course don’t benefit, apart from a nice warm feeling that they may have made things better for the group that follows...it gives an opportunity to raise the issues and state what, if anything, will be changed for the rest of the time you spend together.’

Hang on, I think I feel a pillion passenger climbing onto my hobby horse…

For more on keeping those brain cells awake whilst all around you are asleep look at www.active-learning-site.com