Spotlights

Links

Newsletter Archive

Help Guides & Documentation

My discipline is computer science so I had early exposure to multimedia resources available for the classroom. As a graduate student I created a home page and by the time I started teaching at Wentworth I was determined to use the web as a teaching resource. Subsequently, I make lecture notes, assignments, handouts, in-class programs (that I write before class as a demonstration, or that the students and I write together), class news and the syllabi available on the course pages. When students need extra copies of handouts, they can get them from the web page (though I initially give them paper copies of all material). Additionally, students submit homework assignments electronically (as an attachment to an email).

As a graduate student, I took a class on Teaching Computer Science. The debate was whether or not it was better to present a lecture from multimedia (i.e., using Powerpoint on a laptop) or from traditional handwritten notes on a board. As a student, I had had an instructor use the publishersÌ prepared slides for her lectures. The other students and I disliked the lectures; we attributed our dislike to the slides, themselves. Ironically, in the Teaching Computer Science course I found myself defending the use of pre-prepared slides. You spend less time writing the material on the board, and less time with your back to the students. The question for me was not whether or not to use multimedia in the classroom, it was how to make the multi-media presentations engaging and dynamic. I revisit that question every week when I prepare my lectures.

I have strategies that I use to make the multimedia presentation more effective (for me). The first thing I do in the classroom is to distribute the slide handouts so that the students do not need to rewrite the lecture contents into their notes. Additionally, I limit the amount of verbal content on the slides. Instead, I use visual content with a limited amount of accompanying text. Either that or I will start with an illustration and then follow it with a verbal definition so that I can accommodate both the visual and the verbal learner.

After each new concept, I include an exercise that requires students to use the new material; either in groups or individually. Thus, later topics that build on the current material will be easier for students to learn (they will have promoted the foundational material to long-term memory).

Computer Science instruction is part theory (including abstract concepts and concept definitions) and part program implementation (including computer language syntax). Theory and methods are easy to illustrate on slides, either visually or in simple English. For implementation, it is beneficial for students to see the process of program development, or to get concrete demonstrations for abstract (and, generally, hard to grasp) concepts. Thus, on my laptop, I have compilers and interpreters for all of the languages that the students learn. In class, I run demonstrations of example programs, Additionally, I have the students help me write programs (to solve a problem). The latter takes them through the complete process of program development; from problem statement to successful execution of a completed program.

In conclusion, technology, multimedia, more specifically, benefits me a great deal as an instructor. It has enabled me to be organized, prepared, understandable (my handwriting is atrocious), and it has increased the amount time that I have available to spend with students. Though I do not have statistics to prove this, I also claim that technology benefits my students; they can go to directly a web page for course resources or they can refer to clear slide notes for the course concepts.