Creating A Meaningful Classroom Experience

I reserve a lot of my class time for students to brainstorm ideas, reflect on assignments and share their work.  Last semester, a little past the halfway mark, we were shifting our focus to the final research paper – the classic 15 page college research paper, the kind that students put off until finals week and then, like an Octopus swimming in a sea of coffee, type 100 pages overnight in a caffeine induced frenzy.  I asked students to take out a piece of paper and fill in the blank: I am writing about x because I want to find out about y.  And then, I asked them to pose a question about their topic. 

I sat and watched the students write for a few minutes and then started the classic show and tell discussion…who wants to share?

But the first student who shared threw a curve ball.  We talked for a few minutes about her topic and then I asked, “what’s your question?”

“Will it be meaningful?” She replied.

That’s not really what I meant, but she struck at the heart of a major and often over looked question that students struggle with: what’s the point?

I remember when I was writing my Master’s thesis, I called up a friend who I trusted and admired and asked him to help read a section and help me think through a problem.  We had a long, creative and reflective email exchange.  But in his last note he wrote: I don’t know why you spend so much time on school, but I hope you find it meaningful. In other words, what’s the point?

At the time, I didn’t have a good answer. I had lots of ideas about how my work was “meaningful” that didn’t necessarily comport with reality…I’m changing the world #Obvi.  In retrospect, it had more to do with answering a question that pricked me.     

But back to the classroom.  So, what makes a paper meaningful? And what makes it meaningless? 

I threw the question back to the students and we launched into a forty-five minute discussion about college. I can’t say the conversation was on topic, but I learned a lot about the way students think about their role in the classroom.

Here’s some of the feedback:

1. A paper is meaningful if it contributes to a larger, local or national conversation.   
2. A paper is meaningful if the student feels like they have the opportunity to gain some mastery over topic or subject. 
3. A paper is meaningful when students have a personal connection to the question or the topic.
4. A paper is meaningful when students receive a good grade.

The irony, of course, is that if the students fulfill the first three items on the list, the last will almost inevitably follow.  While every student could point to a handful of classes or papers that met these criteria, the majority of classes fell short.  So what makes a paper meaningless? According to the students:

1. When the Professors are looking for a preset answer.
2. When they are trying to meet the professors expectations.
3. When they are assigned a topic (When every student writes on the same topic).
4. When they receive a bad grade.

As an instructor or a professor, it’s likely that you have an intrinsic (and possibly delusional) love of your work – how else could you have survived graduate school?  Regardless of your fantasies, it’s unlikely that your students feel the same way.  But that doesn’t mean they can’t learn.  Helping students find meaning in their work and in the classroom makes teaching and learning easy.  It means that students are more likely to meet deadlines, read assignments, write drafts and deliver quality “A” work. 

Using Prezi to Create Dynamic Content for Online Courses

The first time I taught an online class, I wrote and posted 26 lectures.  Originally, I had thought about filming virtual lectures (complete with laugh track).  But I lacked the time, technology and talent to create engaging stylized videos.  Instead, I came up with talking head videos that were more painful to watch than the Nyan Cat on repeat.  So I posted the lecture notes instead. 

This semester, in an ongoing attempt to break out of blackboard, I started to experiment with Prezi – the flash-based presentation software that allows the users to move in three dimensions.  While nothing can replace the face to face experience of the classroom, Prezi adds a dynamic, interactive and playful quality to the information…even more so than video. 

Traditional slide show software like Power Point, are poorly suited to online classes.  Slide shows that artfully incorporate images and key concepts can be great for large presentations.   But they are only ever a compliment to the presentation, not the presentation itself.  Flipping through slide shows without the presenter – even really good slide shows – feels too much like story time at the public library.

But Prezi actual stands in the place of the presenter and encourages the user to have a unique interaction with the content.  It allows you  to move back and forth between the details and the big picture.  It puts the user in charge and allows them to move through at their own time.  They can follow links, watch videos, listen to audio-casts, look at images or simply read the text.