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Thursday, October 1, 2009

Do Students Read?

Ah, I had one of those classes yesterday that would have made me cry when I was a new teacher. In my morning small group communication class, I was asking questions about the reading assigned for the week and students responding blankly. Three of 30 people admitted to reading the assignment for the week. Sigh.

Oh, well.

3 comments:

Corey H Palmer said...

Hi, a future communication prof here. From what I've experienced from my undergrad peers, this is definitely an unfortunantely frequent phenomenon. Has this been your experience as a professor?

Old Doc Huck said...

Yup. I truly did once cry in an interpersonal communication class when an activity I'd carefully planned fell flat because the students had not read the material. Many of my colleagues find the same problem. Some just give quizzes at the beginning of every class.

Right now, though, my choices are impacted by my new textbook. I ordered it because it was cheap and had everything but I'm finding it boring. So I'm dealing with an interesting choice. Do I have students spend $100 on a good book that most of them don't read or $50 on a boring book that most of them don't read?

bmanfrede said...

One of your interpersonal students here, I hate reading, especially textbooks they are a waste of time. Give me cleff notes or a really detailed outline. Lets cut to the lean and get rid of the stuff that just fills the pages. Textbooks are to slow in the age of information and technology. I do like that you used a book that is a little more to the point. This is that students should be learning from a teacher and not a book. if we just learn from books then teachers are not useful, only tutors are needed then.A good teach expresses their idea well to the students. The text book is like an excessory to the teachers lecture. The real problem is that a place of higher education is run like a business (raping people for the books).This creates a bad taste in your mouth. This is another reason students don't want to buy the books, especially from a school!