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[GeoLib]

I think I'm more inclined to agree with Soulnet here. Watching profs stumble through a complicated diagram can be really frustrating when they could have just prepared one beforehand that would have been easier to read. I think it is most effective when professors use slides and a board together.

[silverspawn]

The (imo) best prof in my university doesn't use a board at all, but has a program thing where there are some parts of the slides prepared, and then he writes on them during the lecture like you write on a tablet. that's kind of a mixture, but it works really well.

generally though, I dislike the usage of boards in lectures.

[Witherweaver]

Okay, yes, there are good cases for using AV aids.

I'm talking about when teachers prepare the entire lecture on powerpoint (or through slides) and just talk while they put them up.  And then say stuff like "you can go download these slides online".  Hey, I already have a book; why do I need your slides?

Also, my education is in math, so most of my courses were math courses, where you really should be going through almost everything on the board.  (Some things can be helpful like using Maple/Matlab/Mathematica to demonstrate or display something.)  I had one undergrad teacher that essentially taught through Maple.. I learned how to use Maple pretty well, but I really didn't like that as a lecturing method.  I took some physics classes that were the teacher showing their prepared slides the entire time and only making small disjoint and out-of-context notes on the board.  I quickly stopped paying attention or going to those classes.

I'm fine with a philosophy class not using visual aid, though I think if you're going to do a class that way it should be modeled a bit more around discussion than straight lecture (e.g., asking questions of the class, people sharing thoughts, etc.).  Though in most cases, highlighting some key points is probably a good idea.

[silverspawn]

I get your point that you should not use prepared slides but instead do the thing that you want to explain why you're explaining it. But that really doesn't have to be on a board. The big advantage of writing on slides over writing on the board is that, after you are done, students can download the finished slides. With a board you either have to scan it somehow, but it doesn't look as nice, or you have to write during the lecture, which I absolutely hate.

[Witherweaver]

I get your point that you should not use prepared slides but instead do the thing that you want to explain why you're explaining it. But that really doesn't have to be on a board. The big advantage of writing on slides over writing on the board is that, after you are done, students can download the finished slides. With a board you either have to scan it somehow, but it doesn't look as nice, or you have to write during the lecture, which I absolutely hate.

For me, downloading the slides is essentially useless.  I retain the knowledge by actually writing stuff down as the professor is doing it.  I guess differently learning styles.

[soulnet]

I get your point that you should not use prepared slides but instead do the thing that you want to explain why you're explaining it. But that really doesn't have to be on a board. The big advantage of writing on slides over writing on the board is that, after you are done, students can download the finished slides. With a board you either have to scan it somehow, but it doesn't look as nice, or you have to write during the lecture, which I absolutely hate.

I have never seen this writing on slides thing, so I don't know. Is it as flexible as writing on a board? If yes, then I agree it is preferable, but I cannot tell whether the cost will be worth it.

[silverspawn]

I get your point that you should not use prepared slides but instead do the thing that you want to explain why you're explaining it. But that really doesn't have to be on a board. The big advantage of writing on slides over writing on the board is that, after you are done, students can download the finished slides. With a board you either have to scan it somehow, but it doesn't look as nice, or you have to write during the lecture, which I absolutely hate.

I have never seen this writing on slides thing, so I don't know. Is it as flexible as writing on a board? If yes, then I agree it is preferable, but I cannot tell whether the cost will be worth it.

I'd say yes, from how I understand it, he has a small screen in front of him and writes on it using some kind of metal stick. His writing isn't exactly pretty, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't look better on a real board. what he writes down there then simultaneously appears on the large screen. you can use choose different colors and delete text like you would in paint. No idea about the cost though.

What I dislike is if a lecture forces you to take notes, because I just hate writing while I listen to something, plus my hand writing is really ugly and I don't want to look at it later. In maths, our prof only uses the board, so if you don't take notes, you just have to learn from the script, so that's what I'm doing, but it's pretty hard at times.

[AHoppy]

The (imo) best prof in my university doesn't use a board at all, but has a program thing where there are some parts of the slides prepared, and then he writes on them during the lecture like you write on a tablet. that's kind of a mixture, but it works really well.

generally though, I dislike the usage of boards in lectures.

This is pretty much exactly what our pros do.  The best have the slides prepared with gaps in them that they fill in during the lecture.  Sometimes slides are just completely blank like a white/black board.  Their writings only get transmitted to students computers if the professor wants them to, otherwise the students have to fill in the writings on their own (which is 99% of the time)  When done right, it's good (I still take notes on paper though).  But just like powerpoint, it can be abused to the point that the students don't do anything

[qmech]

I've always had a strong preference for board over slides, as both a speaker and a listener.  Recently I've begun to think that it might be because slides are implicitly slightly rude, as they imply that the speaker has something in mind to say and is determined to say it.  I also think that a lot of people see preparing slides as the easy option.  I happen to think that it isn't (at least I find board talks much easier), but I suspect that it leads to a selection effect where the slide talks I sit through are disproportionately prepared by bad speakers.  Slides can be used brilliantly, but I think it's really hard and I very rarely see it done well.  (See here for a particularly good example.)

[eHalcyon]

I recall there being studies that showed the physical act of writing notes helped with information retention. The same was not true with typing though.

[soulnet]

I recall there being studies that showed the physical act of writing notes helped with information retention. The same was not true with typing though.

There are also studies that show that for hard sciences (at least for math) the content in a typical lecture is usually hard enough that hand-writing while listening is actually detrimental (this studies are for high school students and professors, not sure how or if they would apply to university students and professors). Apparently the best practice is to have moments to speak and moments to write down without any new content being added, with the writing preferably being guided by some exercise or statement.

When I learned about this last year, I found it funny and sad, because in every university I know there is usually a big separation between theoretical lectures (given by professors) and practice session (given by professors with a lower hierarchy, with a position name that depends heavily on the particular hierarchy used in each place). Moreover, there is usually a subdivision within practice session between speaking outloud (basically giving lectures, although more practical ones) and leaving time for actual exercise solving (which is sometimes even done completely out-of-class). The only place where I have observed something different is in lab sessions, where it is not uncommon to have lectures and practical work interleaved.

To the board-defending speakers: you don't even like slides for showing things like a plot of f(x,y)=x^2-y^2 to first year calculus students? Or an animation of a graph algorithm? There are some things you cannot do on a board in a reasonable amount of time and/or with a good amount of detail. That being said, this semester I used only board for all my lectures and I did a downloadable writeup for those who don't like to take notes. But this was logic and computability and it is all symbolic manipulation so there is not a lot of graphical things to show, other than simple Venn diagrams or tables with arrows.

[qmech]

There are also studies that show that for hard sciences (at least for math) the content in a typical lecture is usually hard enough that hand-writing while listening is actually detrimental

This is something that I worry about.  Undergraduate maths lectures for me consisted of 50 minutes of frantic scribbling and trying to follow on the board what had been said 2 minutes ago, but I still like that better than the situations in which notes are provided.  It's partly a case of saving people from themselves—if I'm given notes I won't read them in anything like the detail I should do.  The ideal might be handing out notes and having people write their own after each lecture, but I know that very few people would.  I actually liked one set of lectures I went to where the proofs on the board were as leaky as a sieve because working out how to fix things later left me with a brilliant understanding of why we were doing what we were doing.  But I can believe that I might be atypical, and I don't want to be responsible for inflicting harmful personal preferences on the next generation.

[Kuildeous]

The only option I had in school was board or no board. Not even PowerPoint.

How times have changed. I help with education for adults, so I'm kind of thrilled with the prospect that educators have with teaching in school nowadays. I'm sometimes get quite envious.

[mpsprs]

To the board-defending speakers: you don't even like slides for showing things like a plot of f(x,y)=x^2-y^2 to first year calculus students? Or an animation of a graph algorithm? There are some things you cannot do on a board in a reasonable amount of time and/or with a good amount of detail. That being said, this semester I used only board for all my lectures and I did a downloadable writeup for those who don't like to take notes. But this was logic and computability and it is all symbolic manipulation so there is not a lot of graphical things to show, other than simple Venn diagrams or tables with arrows.

I tend towards boards.  I like the flexibility to completely change if that's where the class goes.  But you've basically enumerated situations when I do add a computer or slides.  More complex pictures, things with unimportant details (like talking about the RSA algorithm where I don't want them to take notes-though technology failed that day, that was fun) get the computer treatment.  It's not a binary choice though.  Both can be used even within the same class, and probably should be according to the topics, speakers abilities, and so on.

[mpsprs]

This is something that I worry about.  Undergraduate maths lectures for me consisted of 50 minutes of frantic scribbling and trying to follow on the board what had been said 2 minutes ago, but I still like that better than the situations in which notes are provided.
...
But I can believe that I might be atypical, and I don't want to be responsible for inflicting harmful personal preferences on the next generation.

I too worry about this, but I may be even more atypical-I used my notes to try to anticipate steps in class, and consequently they were very good (especially later in undergrad and in grad.  But I know that's not the usual way.

Also on the personal preferences, I hated anything resembling group work or in class worksheets.  I find myself battling (myself) against those preferences now as a teacher.

[Kirian]

Oh man, you guys do not want to get me started about this.

TLDR version; I detest when people who haven't studied teaching try to tell someone how they should teach.

I know we gather a lot of science/math types, but I'm betting we don't have a ton of educators here.  Not professors or instructors, but people who have actually gone through a full teacher-training program and have a degree in education.  If any of you do have an education degree, hey, awesome, we should talk sometime.  But please do understand that just as there is a huge gulf between a degree in chemistry and a degree in chemical engineering, there's a huge gulf between a degree in chemistry and a degree in science education.  (I use those particular examples because those are where three of my degrees are.)

One major problem with college education is that it's (usually) taught not by teachers, but by academics.  Most college professors and instructors aren't trained to teach, and in many schools they have no incentive to learn to do so.  (Don't get me started on Powerpoint presentations in a business setting.)

Now, you guys have already touched on learning styles in this thread.  Consider that every single student is different.  Some of you find writing notes to be helpful, some do better by listening and absorbing the information.  Some want to see the word portion of the information presented as it's spoken about, others are OK with having a slide and following along.  Some prefer working in groups, some prefer working alone.  A good teacher is going to use a mix of styles, because we have to.  There's just no way around it.  So statements like

I ha[te] when teachers use projectors or powerpoint to lecture.  It's a lecture; you should be writing stuff on the board.

are incredibly aggravating to me; they're a blatant display of the Dunning-Kruger effect.  Sometimes things can't be written on the board as you're doing them.  Sometimes you have to present a picture or a diagram.  Complex diagrams--say, a midsaggital section of the brain--aren't something you can draw on the fly, especially if you're then going to draw on it to label/explain the various structures.

Now, some simple diagrams can be drawn by hand as you go, and in many cases that is likely to be the best way to get the information across; for example, a static diagram of the temperature as height in the atmosphere increases, showing the atmospheric layers, is likely to have less impact than a diagram drawn from scratch.  Of course, some students will find the static diagram more useful, so a good teacher will also have that handy, possibly in the textbook, possibly as a handout. 

Certainly there are things that usually should not be presented as a single slide.  Math and scientific math problems should be presented step-by-step, because that's what you're likely to expect from the students on an exam.  This can be done entirely with Powerpoint, if you spend the time on it, but it's usually easier to write it out as you go.  Nonetheless, you're going to have some students who will follow better if the entire problem is in front of them at the start, and they can follow the steps as they go.

The single best system I've used, in terms of technology, is the Smart-board-like system described a couple of times above, I don't remember by whom.  Being able to write notes onto a virtual "board," which can be superimposed onto a Powerpoint slide or diagram if you want, or just left blank if that's better, is a huge, huge advantage.  It's something you can't do with just a blackboard or just a whiteboard.  It allows a huge amount of flexibility, including the ability to fluidly switch from lecture/presentation to class participation/practice.  I love the classrooms I've been in that have had that setup, and they're thankfully becoming more common.

OK, rant off.

[Witherweaver]

I was referring to things that have a natural step-by-step process and merit explanation as they are written.

[Tables]

So I sometimes watch videos from Extra Credits, and watching this recent upload I found it... confusing:



They video starts off fairly normally - critiquing a commonly used system (difficulty setting in games) and then moves on to praising Dark Souls 2 on it's more subtle and effective difficulty system. Except... their description of the system made it sound so bad that I was left wondering if this video was meant to be a parody (I don't think it is, but...). They praised things like some weapons and styles of play being naturally much more effective, therefore lowering the games difficulty - which is generally something most people would just call an overpowered/underpowered weapon. Another benefit they mentioned of this is that the player doesn't feel like they're choosing the easy route, they just feel like they're playing the game. I dunno, I think that if I found a weapon way more effective I'd notice. They also commented on how there are 'intentional AI bugs' in the pathfinding, to make these more effective 'easy' weapons even better. So are people not going to notice they're exploiting the pathfinding AI in this kind of game? Not to mention, how would they know it's intentional? That's a really odd claim to make.

By comparison they have in the past criticised the difficulty of Fire Emblem: Awakening. As best I can tell, this has a lot of the same things that Dark Souls has, except that it also has difficulty choices in addition. For example there's things you can use from not too far into the game that are significantly more effective, and many people realise are fairly quickly. There are things you can do that completly removes the difficulty, or ways you can play that make things more challenging, which seem to be intentional as options. In other words, very similar to the things they're describing in DS2. But nobody praises that for it's difficulty options - and they shouldn't, since those things are more signs of the game's imbalance in your options, rather than the designers trying to give you difficulty options.

[Kirian]

I was referring to things that have a natural step-by-step process and merit explanation as they are written.

Then I hope you've learned today to properly clarify what you mean the first time you say/write something, especially in a situation where you can't immediately clarify because the conversation isn't live.

[Witherweaver]

I was referring to things that have a natural step-by-step process and merit explanation as they are written.

Then I hope you've learned today to properly clarify what you mean the first time you say/write something, especially in a situation where you can't immediately clarify because the conversation isn't live.

I'M A BAD PERSON.

Okay, yeah, you're right.

[pacovf]

This website about the worst things for sale is the best... hum... thing... for... free?

Hum my oneliner lost steam there, but yeah, funny site.

[silverspawn]

good post. also, it has lead me to some really interesting wikipedia articles related to the Kruger effect.

[silverspawn]

I've could talk so much about this

[pacovf]

Can someone explain the math/science distinction you have in the States? Isn't Mathematics a science?

[SwitchedFromStarcraft]

This will be an interesting set of responses.