Today we took a catch our breath break and did a little presentation and where we’ve been and where we’re going. I wanted them to see how far they have come and how much they have done in just 6.5 weeks – almost mid-term. Talked about the purpose and definition of a liberal education… handout from AAC&U.
Exam #2 saw them reach their goal… 10 more points on average… For exam #3 – I want them to start to close the gap between them and the other students in Bi Sc… about a 10 point difference… We’ve been having individual appointments and overall it seems that people who are struggling on the exams are either spending too much time on Cornell Notes and not enough time in the hard work of memorizing the material – or not spending enough time at all on things. Let’s see if some tweaking for those folks can make a difference – and will that raise the overall performance.
I also gave them mid-term evals – so I’ll see what they have to say there….what’s working, what isn’t – suggestions and Keep it/Lose it/Modify it for all the major activities and assignment types.
Finished up with a fun activity – using Twitter as they listened to an 8 minute recorded lecture by Dr. Blay to tweet just the main points of the lecture – using the hashtag #lled005. I wanted to see who was able to get the main ideas and who not… Interesting overall – after about 3 minutes typing slowed and some started doing other stuff on the devices… I stopped – had them re-group – talked about needing to build up endurance and focus time… stay in the game!!! We finished up – looked at the data – I need to do it again – the technology was in the way – second time should be better…