Vignettes from the Field
Snapshot
David |
Lecturer |
Discipline |
Biological Sciences |
Delivery mode |
Internal students |
Year |
Undergraduate |
Experience with WBLT |
Negative |
I would like to see students having to pay eg., $20/lecture to access the notes on (WBLT) unless they can show cause as to why they cannot attend the lecture (work, family, unit incompatibility); in which case they get it for free.
David’s story
David has been teaching undergraduate programs in the field of Biological Sciences for almost ten years. He is passionate about his subject and receives positive feedback about his teaching from his students.
In recent years he has noticed the numbers in his units growing significantly. For example, in one of his 2 nd year units, there are 120 – 170 student enrolled. To help manage the larger numbers, he supplements the three 1 hour lectures plus one three hour lab session per week with WebCT readings, resources and discussion:
I use webCT discussion pages a lot, but it's become a lot less personal.
WBLT and teaching
David uses WBLT because he feels pressured by his students and his University:
The philosophy of the university is that we must do everything to appease students. However, I don't think appeasing students has anything to do with quality education. We are not able to challenge the students, to stimulate them. Everything is geared towards getting the weaker students through their program.
David is concerned about the falling standards of his students and has been keeping a spreadsheet of results to enable him to compare student groups over recent years. He has noticed a significant rise in the number of students who withdraw from the unit late in the semester or fail to sit the final exam. He attributes this trend, at least in part, to the students’ falling behind in listening to the lectures during the semester and then being overwhelmed when they are confronted with the final exam.
What they are doing is filing away their iLectures with the idea that they will just study them before the exam but by then it's too late.
David sees lecture attendance as an important part of student learning throughout the semester:
When students come to lectures they most often take notes. By doing that they absorb some of the material. So by the end of semester they have absorbed quite a lot. If they don't come to lectures they miss that.
Maintaining some spontaneity during his lectures is important to David and he often adds extra parts to the overhead projections he uses to demonstrate concepts:
In lectures I often use the overhead project to supplement the material. These are spontaneous additions that occur to me as I'm giving the lecture. A lot of students like this and I get good feedback from this. Some students don't like it, probably the ones who don't come to lectures because they miss this.
Impressions of using WBLT
Students need to be stimulated and challenged, they need to be pushed otherwise they won't learn.
Although he sees online environments as very useful for providing figures, diagrams and source material, David is concerned about the impact of technologies such as WBLT on students’ learning:
I think that e-learning has a place but I don't think it should mean that we
just hand everything to students on a plate. It should be used as a learning aid, not to replace conventional learning but to support it. It seems that we are where the United States was 20-30 years ago. It didn't work for them then, it won't work for us now.
Learning Futures
I would also like to develop more (online) items that challenge and stimulate students.
I don't know what these are but I'm excited by the potential.
I would like to see access to (WBLT) material restricted to those who for valid reasons cannot get to the lectures. I also think they should not be downloadable as its too easy. For those who without a valid reason just miss a lecture, they should pay for the access, and again it should not be downloadable.
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