Chris Juzwiak

Carnegie Grant, Fall 2005

Week 12

This week, I provided some personal tutoring in PPT design to my colleague in English who has taken a dramatic interest in this medium (see last week’s notes). Her budding convictions about the pedagogical merits of dynamic lecture slides were bolstered by the distinctive response from her students. The class was especially engaged with the lecture, so much so that two students who “never take notes,” actually took out pen and paper and wrote down what they saw on the screen. The instructor felt that the response was not based entirely on the novelty of the presentation; rather, she observed a different level of critical engagement that corresponded to the intellectual rigor and clarity of the presentation. Furthermore, the behavioral shift in the two non-note-taking students signaled that the slides themselves promised a seriousness of content and intention apparent to the audience. As a result of this auspicious debut, the instructor began designing another presentation, this one even more content rich, dynamics, and experimental. I marveled at her work and offered what design tips I could.

Keep in mind that this is one of our college’s most talented developmental instructors, and my hope had been to recruit her for participation in our SPECC research; however, until two weeks ago, she was a self-avowed technophobe and declined my offer to join our research team. This week, I renewed my invitation, suggesting that she would be a great asset to our inquiry. She promised to think about the offer.

I began composing our 2005 year-end SPECC report and the renewal proposal for 2006. I also made corrections to website quizzes and posted new slideshows for Ezell.