College Student Journal, Dec 2000 v34 i4 p482
TEACHING GEN X & Y: AN ESSAY PART 2: TEACHING STRATEGIES.

JOEL CHARLES SNELL.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2000 Project Innovation (Alabama)

In the last essay, there was discussion of establishing one's self on the first day. This final essay describes teaching strategies.

Teaching

I would like to suggest that a "way" to teach is by doing as little lecture education as possible. Many of us grew up and old with the classic lecture. It is still used and with some, it is an outstanding success. However, for those who find this generation disengaged with even your most exciting presentations, I would like to suggest the following. In terms of the media, you are another "talking head." Gen X & Y have been exposed to thousands of hours of constantly changing images on cable television and the internent. If they have a remote with their cable, the images can change even faster by "surfing." My observation after teaching for 35 years, is that they have "short attention spans." Thus the following are based upon that assumption.

The Ten Minute Lecture

If the academic hour is 50 or 55 minutes, I would like to suggest that the first ten be spent where you lecture. You can only set the stage for the class. The ten minutes is a very long time in the media and for these generations, it is a long, long time. For what ever the topic, use your most exciting material to catch their attention and segue into material that they will be doing for the rest of the hour with their fellow class mates. The rest of the time will be spent doing something directly with the material or conducting activities that compliment the material.

The Collaborative Lecture

If you have an exciting lecture that is no; in the text book. Type it up, refine it, have it printed and distributed to the class for that day. Give the printed lecture to each student. They are then to teach each other and come as a small group to you and tell you about the lecture or ask any questions at that time or during your office hour. Further, they can e-mail you or call you on the phone. Once they have completed their task they are to teach others and then leave. Test frequently. You may want to test often, because you can soon know who needs a tutor, and numerous other parties want to know how they are doing in class work and tests.

The Vertical File

You may want to collect information on various topics, I subscribe to three dailies and five newsweeklies and have two file drawers full of information on the numerous areas that compliment various chapters. Students are to read a number of articles and in small groups report to you and others the information relative to the topic. This helps them in their rhetoric skills and provides team building protocols for them. This is valuable for our Skills 2000 program. This is an understanding between Kirkwood and numerous employers relative to the basic skills each student should know, before they graduate.

The Rhetoric Day

One day is set aside for them to give a speech to compliment one of the chapters. By giving them an article to report, they have the material to give the speech. Make this unannounced to maximize attendance and give them points to reward them for giving the speech.

The Math Skills Day(s)

Many areas in the social sciences and liberal arts require a fairly sizable amount of math. You can help by having them solve math problems that compliment the chapter that you are discussing. In all my face-to-face classes, they will have to know and calculate mean, median, mode, range, average deviation, standard deviation, chi square, ratios, proportions, and compound interest for population extrapolations, probabilities and factorials. All these math skills days are sprinkled in the curriculum throughout the semester. Students learn to teach each other, establish division of labor, and report to you in teams.

The Computer Skills Day(s)

Once again, students learn with others how to do use the infotrak in the library, how to print an article on the internet, how to use the word processor, how use a search engine, and the steps to do statistical analysis by micro case with U.S. populations. They also can e-mail you.

The Assessment Day(s)

There are numerous things that can go on during these times. You may want to do pre/post testing of the material to demonstrate to your administration that the students have "grown" during the semester. They may be working on various instruments that assess themselves in terms of personality and social skills and all of this may compliment the material. There is also time set aside toward the end of the semester to assess your teaching. I give at least 15 hour exams with essay components and days must be set aside for these activities. Also, make the students write summaries after each class so that they can tell you what happened in class and ask any questions that they feel they could not ask in class. At this point, it can also be valuable to give "pop" quizzes to see if the student is current with the material. Further, the summaries each day act as a form of social control. If some one is disruptive in class, all the instructor needs to do is walk out of class and blame the offending parties. Attendance points are escalated and all the students will lose considerably because of a few. As the points become inflated, they can be normalized at the end of the semester so that the weighting of attendance fits within the points system of all work in the class.

The Library Day

I go with the students to get their material for papers and article reports. I then verify the research and then they can proceed with their outside work on a term paper or article report. They then photocopy the material and go on with their work. If necessary, I loan them the money to get the photocopy work completed. I do this because, it is now even easier and cheaper to be able to purchase reports and papers on the internet. It is worth a class day to be set aside to empower them not to buy a paper from extra-legal sources.

The Comprehensive Syllabus and Study Guide

All of the above activities are in the main, non-linear. Therefore to give them the organization that they need to study for the numerous hour exams, the syllabus provides the over-all big picture, but the study guide gives the essentials. My study guides tell them how many multiple choice questions are on the exams. I tell them about the essay or essays. Typical multiple choice questions are provided. Learning is clarified so that they must know the material, but not have to believe it. Also, support material from popular periodicals is enclosed. Further, "short cuts" or words that help them know the definitions with simpler "cues" in terms of what the definition means, are given to them.

The Every Changing Classroom

It seems that every year, I am making small changes and every three or four years, rather larger changes. I finally quit the classic lecture/discussion/simulation after the spring of 1995. By autumn, I was ready with a rather revised format. It worked. There have been other changes since then.

My guess is that the future will be composed of short lectures, discussion and remaining work on a computer. However, this notion is extremely expensive. This means that every student in every classroom has a computer before them. And after that? Some suggest distance learning. However, I have had semesters where I have taught both on-line and off-line(face- to face.) I discover a high drop out rates with on-line education. On-line requires a great deal of self motivation. It appears to be more viable for non-traditional students.

Teaching in the 21st Century

Change is constant. This article has been a discussion of some teaching strategies that are action oriented. No student is allowed to disengage themselves from the class. Various strategies have been presented that continually involve the student directly or indirectly with the material. Lectures are extremely short, because students appear to have short attention spans and if the literature reviewed in the last essay is correct, they want to be excited about the material. For some professors, this can be accomplished in the 50 minute lecture. For the rest of us, action oriented strategies may be viable.

References

I would like to thank Gary Botos for his help on this essay.

JOEL CHARLES SNELL
Kirkwood College
Cedar Rapids, IA 52406-2068