Week 6.  Using Technology for Teaching Large Class 

This week,  as the previous weeks, I learned a lot from this class. This week's  topic is teaching large class and using technology to help teachers teach large classes or lecture-based classes. There are several reading materials on the strategies for teaching large classes. I read Richard M. Felder's article "Effective Teaching In Large Classes"  which contains several strategies for teaching large classes. I also read Rick Finnan and Donna Shaw’s “Enhancing Learning by Engaging Students” who describe basic principles (variety, pace, collaboration speaking style and individualization) that help promote the students' engagement and learning. I like Richard M. Felder’s article “Beating The Numbers Game: Effective Teaching In Large Classes”. It shows us how to get students actively involved in the class while at the same time help them develop a sense of community. The article also provides us with some ideas for teaching large classess. One way is giving students frequent homework assignments. I was aspired by his motto ‘ People learn by doing, not by watching and listening’

Online assessment is  a new thing for me. The Blackboard's assessment seems very useful as it does not only provides us as teachers with a form to create online assessments using different question types but also gives students with immediate feedback. It also provides us with assessment features to test students’ knowledge and measure their progress. I also checked the Blackboard's Tutorials for using the Assessment features on http://ondemand.blackboard.com/r9/assess.htm which shows how the Grade Center is structured and how to complete common Grade Center Tasks. This page includes video and PDF tutorials for using Blackboard's Grade Center, Tests and Surveys, and Assignment features.

Respondus is also a new tool for me. It is very invaluable for teacher as it helps teacher create and manage exam. The instruction video shows that respondus is an efficient and easy tool to us for large classes. I think I  need some computer knowledge if I want  to use it for my class.

Improving Lectures with Technology is a must for those who are engaged in teaching large class. Carnegie Mellon describes best practices of teaching with technology and various tools, including Blackboard, a teacher can use. Those who decide to use computer projections should prepare themselves well before the class in order the presentation runs smoothly. One tip to solve common problems that arise when using technology during presentations is by troubleshooting the computer.

Clickers (personal response systems) is an easy-to-use technology as students can select anonymously an answer to multiple-choice, true/false, yes/no questions displayed by the lecturer on the board. Students choose their answers on transmitter units that send a signal to a receiver attached to the lecturer’s laptop, and the results can be displayed for the whole class to see. I think this can only be done in a classroom where the transmitters are already prepared before the class. In my condition, this is quite impossible for this time as all the classroom are publicly open and not designed for this need yet. Surely it is quite costsly to implement as we need  a lot of clickers.

This week I learn the use of power point for teaching large class. Drs. Terry & Cathy Cavanaugh’s article “Creating Interactive power point Presentations for Teachers and Students” is a good source of idea for power point presentation.   I am already familiar with ppt and  I mostly use  power point presentation for my large classes. During the last five years,  most of lecturers at my university  use it for teaching as the university has provided every classroom with projectors. However, we have to use our own  portable computer as the university does not provide it for us. For presentations, I often use slideshare (http://www.slideshare.net/).  For non ESL classes, I  usually use seminar method where both teacher and students utilize power point for the discussion. I found that in my students’ power points were much more interesting than my traditional look one. They have varied and interesting slide designs.  They dowloaded  the template design   freely from https://sites.google.com/site/freedownloadppttemplates/home. 

Eventhough  I am very familiar with PPT, interactive power point is new for me.  We can make an interactive point on https://docs.google.com/    It allows us to insert images, audios and videos as well as links to the internet.  I am so glad that  I could finish one and proudly  share it on Wiki class. It is about 'using offer and requests'.  It contains some videos from you tube  the students may watch. You can check my interactive power point on 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1LqoMgCV9qIkythp9Yv6oNsz_JGBuLGY_HWn9GuY26es/edit#slide=id.g124413b5b_030. Hope you learn something  from it.