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From: matloff@bizet.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Matloff)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,sci.math,sci.physics
Subject: Re: Student preparedness
Message-ID: <18626@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 29 Dec 88 19:49:30 GMT
References: <4893@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <6435@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> <605@ucrmath.EDU> <2141@faline.bellcore.com>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff)
Organization: EECS, UC Davis
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In article <2141@faline.bellcore.com> dph@faline.bellcore.com (Daniel P. Heyman) writes:
>In article <605@ucrmath.EDU>, marek@ucrmath.EDU (Marek Chrobak) writes:
>> In article <1077@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:

*> How true and how sad. I have once tried to do something with
*> this habit of "xeroxing" a lecture, by following very closely
*> a textbook, so that the students do not have to take too
*> much notes, and may have more time to think in class. Once they
*> noted that I follow the book, half of them stopped to come to
*> class at all. In the other half this xeroxing habit was yet
*> stronger than I thought, they were still copying every word
*> I said. 

>My advisor in graduate school tried handing out lecture notes
>prior to giving the lecture. He told the students they had notes
>of everything we was going to write on the board, so they should
>concentrate on the why and not the how, and to stop him if they
>didn't understand the why of a step. After a few classes he became
>completley frustrated when he looked up and saw everyone ( I was
>not in this class) copying from the board. He gave up before
>the term was over.

I'm surprised that both of you said this.  I've been doing this for
several years, and the students really like it.

In several of the courses I teach, I keep the lecture notes in troff
files.  [Maybe you guys just Xeroxed **handwritten** stuff?  That
might explain the problem. :-) ]  I print them and sell them as a 
"textbook" for the course through the bookstore.  I have the students 
bring the printed notes to class, and I "lecture" by going through
the notes, not word-by-word (and certainly NOT copying the pages
to the blackboard), but rather by discussing the notes in a very
informal, conversational manner.  I rarely write anything on the 
blackboard, so there is nothing to copy down.  So the students are
free to concentrate on listening to what I'm saying, and to think
about it and ask questions.  They do NOT spend their class time
writing, though they do occasionally annotate the margins of their 
printed notes with additional clarifications, remarks, etc.

The students DO like this approach.  They automatically get an
accurate copy of the notes, and they are more free to think about
what I'm saying and ask questions.  True, *some* students will use
this as an opportunity to skip class, but so what?  They are the
losers, because they miss the extra, spur-of-the-moment comments
I make, the answers to questions raised during the lectures, etc.

And of course, from my point of view, it is a tremendous time-saver.
I don't have to prepare lectures!  I do make minor modifications to the 
notes each time I teach the course, but it's a lot easier to slightly
modify a file than to write out entire lectures by hand.

"Try it, you'll like it!" :-)

   Norm