I'm curious about how DE encourages students to do the assigned readings and come to class prepared. I am suckered into providing more "lecture-type" material because students don't come to class prepared and thus can't do the experiential activities.
Does providing an experiential curriculum without lecture ultimately do this on its own? Does building better relationships or "lighting the fire" cause students to do the readings?
Ava, Do you give participation marks? If so, could they be used to encourage students to do the readings? This seems to work in my class.
And then we could get into a discussion of what constitutes "participation" and how we can really evaluate it. Who's to say that the person with the head down in the back row isn't participating in his/her own way :-)
The dilemma that we all have is rooted in credentialism, argues Perelman in one of my favourite texts: School's Out. He abhors the fact that learning and all related activities have been manipulated by educational leaders into a competition for grades. And I completely agree with him. I love being with learners, and revel in the dialogue...right up to that moment when I have to return the first grade.
I equate attendance with participation. I assume that if the student is showing up, s/he is getting something, even if not verbally participating.
As for the return of the first assignment, yes, it is a bit like the honeymoon is over. I have instituted a "drop" technique, where I drop the lowest mark of the first four or five assignments, unless the low mark is a result of plagiarism or cheating. My assignments, then, add up to 105%-115%, from which I drop one mark.
This technique gives me a chance to be "harder" in my initial marking than I may want to be, but I don't want to give false impressions to students either. Students are far more accepting of their first F when they know it won't be counted, and they seem more willing to learn from it. Students also may be more willing to take risks if not everything counts against them.
This is manageable in the smaller classes I teach. The logistics would be crazy in larger classes.
Judy Johnson
My approach requires students to have done the reading before coming to class because I put them in groups or put them on the spot to answer questions about the texts we are analyzing that day.
If students haven't read the material, I suspect they get pretty bored pretty fast and then want to have read the texts for the next times. I find that there are always enough students who have read the material to carry the dialogue.
Things to consider with this approach requiring prereading:
1. Keep readings short on days when assignments are due. Students are usually scrambling to get the assignment done (and sometimes barely that). I sometimes will then read the texts (or pertinent parts) aloud, so that I know that all who are there have then heard it at least once, and for those who have read the material, the rereading reinforces and enhances their own.
2. If the students are in small groups, I circulate to make sure that at least a couple of students in each group have read the material so they can have a dialogue (in the truest sense of the word).
3. I have sent students who haven't preread the material off to read it while the rest of us start in on discussion. When they come back, they join the discussion (I've only done that a couple of times, but they came back).
Judy Johnson
