New Take on Class Notes
One of the difficulties felt by all teachers, I am sure, is the feeling of “if I did it, you can do it.” Even though I am only a few years removed from my students I have this feeling over and over. The most prevalent topic related to this perspective is note-taking. Geography is a discipline dependent on a vast amount of knowledge in a variety of forms, thus insisting on a detailed orientation to class notes. This was only intensified for me, being fascinated by every word from my professors and writing down almost every syllable. In addition, I was only two courses away from a double major in History. Naturally, history class is not intensive. With these two disciplines dominating my college experience, I have no impression of class time without coming away with plus 10 pages of notes.
This experience has possibly (probably) left me in a predisposed position that is not favored by my students. I am not sure when the switch happened, possibly even when I was in college, but a transition has been made that inclines students to expect their professors to give them the powerpoint slides (essentially all the notes). This was an absolute “no” for the first four weeks of my first-semester of teaching. This was based on both my high standards of students’ abilities to take notes, but the fact I was only completing that day’s lecture (power point) at the earliest a few hours before class would not have fit that model. However, after we had a four-day weekend that entailed me boarded up in my attic apartment, only coming down to heat up a can of soup and throw Izzi a stick during those two minutes, I could “get ahead.” Once, I had a steady lead on my PowerPoint presentations. I had just enough “extra time” to copy the power points over and remove the “important words” and “details.” This was a compromise, and it worked, ok. Of course, the slides were too extensive, as a result of my desire to teach it ALL. Nevertheless, the students were very grateful, and I understand the benefit of having the majority of the notes so you can actually listen to the professor and not focus on writing every word. I held onto my “but I did it” mentality, however, under my breath.
So, now that I have a repertoire of complete PowerPoint presentations that I could edit, clean, condense, and reorganize for efficiency over the Christmas break, I was able to create a “follow along.” I took the text from the slide shows, organized it in an outline format, and again, left out the key points, essential words, and details. This was all given to them online when the semester started. I am a facilitating instructor, meaning I always ask for the information before I give it to them. To do this, it was very important to take out any words or phrases that would allow them to “guess” the correct answer to my questions by filling in the blank. The outline also has complete wholes that require an entire “note-taking” fill-in. This took several weeks to perfect, but so far, this has been a great addition to my classroom (even at the expense of my own stubbornness).
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One of the difficulties felt by all teachers, I am sure, is the feeling of “if I did it, you can do it.” Even though I am only a few years removed from my students I have this feeling over and over. The most prevalent topic related to this perspective is note-taking. Geography is a discipline dependent on a vast amount of knowledge in a variety of forms, thus insisting on a detailed orientation to class notes. This was only intensified for me, being fascinated by every word from my professors and writing down almost every syllable. In addition, I was only two courses away from a double major in History. Naturally, history class is not intensive. With these two disciplines dominating my college experience, I have no impression of class time without coming away with plus 10 pages of notes.
This experience has possibly (probably) left me in a predisposed position that is not favored by my students. I am not sure when the switch happened, possibly even when I was in college, but a transition has been made that inclines students to expect their professors to give them the powerpoint slides (essentially all the notes). This was an absolute “no” for the first four weeks of my first-semester of teaching. This was based on both my high standards of students’ abilities to take notes, but the fact I was only completing that day’s lecture (power point) at the earliest a few hours before class would not have fit that model. However, after we had a four-day weekend that entailed me boarded up in my attic apartment, only coming down to heat up a can of soup and throw Izzi a stick during those two minutes, I could “get ahead.” Once, I had a steady lead on my PowerPoint presentations. I had just enough “extra time” to copy the power points over and remove the “important words” and “details.” This was a compromise, and it worked, ok. Of course, the slides were too extensive, as a result of my desire to teach it ALL. Nevertheless, the students were very grateful, and I understand the benefit of having the majority of the notes so you can actually listen to the professor and not focus on writing every word. I held onto my “but I did it” mentality, however, under my breath.
So, now that I have a repertoire of complete PowerPoint presentations that I could edit, clean, condense, and reorganize for efficiency over the Christmas break, I was able to create a “follow along.” I took the text from the slide shows, organized it in an outline format, and again, left out the key points, essential words, and details. This was all given to them online when the semester started. I am a facilitating instructor, meaning I always ask for the information before I give it to them. To do this, it was very important to take out any words or phrases that would allow them to “guess” the correct answer to my questions by filling in the blank. The outline also has complete wholes that require an entire “note-taking” fill-in. This took several weeks to perfect, but so far, this has been a great addition to my classroom (even at the expense of my own stubbornness).
The first benefit is being able to prohibit laptops in my classroom with a clear conscience. I would have never survived my classes without being able to type my notes, so I had to justify sanctioning them. Previously, I would have been trying not to notice when a student had not looked at me in class but only at his screen. In addition, I was continually worried computers were distracting others who truly wanted to focus but were inhibited. Taking laptops out of the equation allows my students to fully engage in the classroom conversation that takes up most of my class. This has been a huge lift to my composure in my classroom, knowing I have their full attention and can rest assured they will all participate, even if it is out of lack of a better distraction.
If there was anything I learned from my first semester teaching college courses, it was “learn to modify.” As time progressed, I learned what worked and did not work and why. Leaving the past strict note-taking, professor-endlessly lecturing classroom environment behind and embracing a partial-note-giving, conversational classroom environment has been an inspiring transformation that I plan to keep working on and sharing.
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