Chris Juzwiak

Carnegie Grant, Fall 2005

Week 15

Our newly-enlisted SPECC team member, Ida Ferdman, invited me to observe the English 191 class in which she has launched her use of PowerPoint over the past weeks. She is so enthused with the response from her students that she would like an informal evaluation of the pedagogy. I was genuinely thrilled with this opportunity. (It is edifying indeed when pedagogical innovations are so compelling that they engender immediate trust and collaboration among colleagues.) Since I have been using the electronic pedagogy in my own English 191 classes for the past five years, I was eager to observe—from the audience’s perspective—how these dynamic lecture materials work.

Ida’s interactive lesson instructed students about time management during a final essay examination. The minute Ida began this lesson, the students took immediate interest in the material on the first slide. Just as she has reported, I witnessed virtually every student in the class pulling out pen and paper to take notes. There was a distinct seriousness in their response to the material, which is uncharacteristic for a significant percentage of developmental students. (This is a seriousness, however, which we have observed with regularity throughout the first phase of our SPECC research.) The presentation was spacious in the sense that it drew students in and offered them occasions to interact and pose questions. The dynamic and incremental sequencing of information on the screen provided significant focus to each component of the lesson, ensuring that no key concept was shortchanged. Ida also embedded timed practices within the presentation, animating the screen with a ticking stopwatch and signaling the end of the activity with a pre-programmed buzzer. This seamless integration of related activities made participation quite irresistible, and every student in the class (21of them) was thoroughly engaged. There was plenty of ambient light in the room, so the students could read and write at their desks while following instructions on the screen. Overall, this was a highly motivational and productive educational experience for the students—and me! (I will borrow a few of Ida’s innovations in both content and presentation.)

To view Ida’s PowerPoint lecture on time management, click here.

Also this week, I called a meeting of the English SPECC researchers to begin planning Phase II of our work, which will begin in Fall 2006. To this end, we proposed initial timelines and goals. Ezell, Ferdman, and Tiernan also expressed an interest in beginning the collaborative work on PPT presentations for grammar instruction during the winter intercession, instead of waiting for the summer intercession. This request is a testament to their convictions about the power of this pedagogy. We scheduled to meet on January 4^th for an all-day brainstorming and planning session to launch this collaborative project.

We also used this meeting to discuss the three-day residency on Representations of Teaching, as proposed by Pat Hutchings, to take place in April at the Carnegie Foundation. Four of us agreed that we would very much like to attend this important event (our fifth member, Angela Morales, will be 8 ½ months pregnant at that time). We organized our plans for the joint application and left with individual assignments toward the completion of that document. When we meet on January 4^th, we will assemble the different pieces of the application and review the finished product.