Lectures
It has been a real time saver for me to reuse my presentations after each term. I have found it to freshen my ability to focus on the relationship I establish with my students.
I find reusing lecture materials from term to term is very halpful just as long as your remember to update it to make it relevant. Even though the theory is the same, examples used in application must be changed up!
I find by re-using my power points that I can address stumble points for the students that have occured in the past. Also it allows keeping the material current with some newsworthy event like day 90 of the oil spill and how that is affecting the environment and how will we receive safe healthy seafood at our culinary college.
Another aspect is, I can challenge the students to use their Iphone's technology to find an answer to the question or to answer a question asked by another student. I have found an incrediable response to this as I feel most of the students have this technology and use it outside of class, so why not in class.
I repeat they are for the course work not texting replys for something to do to night or where to go for lunch....
That's a great method Miguel. It keeps your content fresh but allows you to work quickly to prepare.
I also reuse presentaions but I try and add something new to it each time.
I agree that re-use makes for smoothing out the presentation of material to students. It keeps the flow going, and still allows for time to deviate from schedule to handle a question that may be off point.
Absolutely reuse presentations. Almost all of my lectures have corresponding power point presentations. Each time I use them, I make adjustments.
I like to set a deadline, maybe 6 months, where I go back and edit any material that I have been using. This tends to keep things a little "fresher".
This is something I also do since I teach several of the same classes. However, I do modify each presentation to add more detail or added speaker notes. I really enjoy creating my own presentations because it is much easier getting my thoughts and ideas out to my students.
Thanks,
Anna
I like to ask students on their finals what they would do to improve the course. It gives them empowerment and a sense of accomplishment.
I think building off your foundation is essential. I reuse my presentations but I do add and delete things also.
Indeed, it's really about building off of your existing foundation each semester as you can.
Reusing content is good, but classes should evolve each term. New topics are discussed and new technology should always be addressed. This changes term to term.
This is a great point Julie. When we re-use the same content, it does actually get better for our students over time. When we become more familiar with our content, we can add color and richness each semester to the foundation we have built.
One good thing about re-using presentations is being able to know the potential questions and problems with a particular presentation.
Additionally I find that re-using some content allows me to slowly perfect the content as well as have at least a basic amount of content that I can "tweak" for use with a specific audience of students.
