Mini-lectures and Labs
In the “Make Students Active Participants in Learning” section there is an example of offering mini-lectures and than having the students apply the concept allowing them to become active learners. This is a very common technique I use. The problem I have is there are some students that finish the lab before others. I want to give all my students the time they need to “get” the concept –I never rush the slower ones. I tell my students that if they are done early to start working on next weeks homework assignments.
Does anyone have other ideas of what to do with the faster students so they are not just sitting there waiting for others to finish?
My IT classes do small bits of lecture, small bits of hands-on. I have the same problems you do. Some are brand-new with servers, others have more experience.
In class, to keep everyone moving at the same pace, I direct them through the hands-on activities, paying special attention to the slower ones. If they delay too much, I will coach their thought process: "You need to open a Service, so let's look in Admin tools and see if you see anything related to Services."
I also encourage them all to make careful notes in their books, and spend time with the material outside of class.
I have to agree that braking up longer lectures is necessary for both student and teacher. I have on more than one occasion stopped the class mid lecture because I found myself getting bored noticed my class starting to disengage, so we took a mental break and did something hands on relating to the material even if was not directly part of the curriculum.
I agree, I will provide additional material for the advanced students. I set up groups of advanced students have them go to the resource center to gather information to complete their new assignment. I also put advanced students with slower students in the lab, i beleive this helps the student interact and creates a better learning environment.
I provide the advanced students with additional materials so they can advance farther and faster on their own.
I have them work on their final projects by spending the extra time researching and gathering assets needed to complete the assignments.
I, also, create groups so the advanced can help the slower students.
I will be interested in seeing how others handle the advanced student.
That is a fantastic approach to helping with skills or lessons that can be overwhelming or time consuming for some but easily accomplished by others.
I tend to indicate that during a project that might be a longer process to encourage breaks 1/2 way through and to re-initerate or add additional information to the labs so it refreshes the student thought process.
I definitely plan on incorporating these mini-lectures in the future.
When I have an activity that will require a wide range of completion time, I schedule it directly before a break. I tell the students that they can have a half hour to complete the task and that a ten minute break will immediately follow. That way, the slower students can take all forty minutes. The fast students, on the other hand, can take ten minutes and have a very long break. This helps with quizzes also.
Hi Carrie,
What I do is to create learning teams and have students work together to solve problems or work through case studies when I have student that work faster than others. Since this happens almost every time I teach the course I am set up to put the teams together and assign them work tasks. This works very well to keep the class moving forward without anyone falling behind or not getting the needed concepts.
Gary
