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| Bellet
Teaching Excellence Awards |
Pete Simonson,
Communication
I use various techniques
in the context of the big lecture to reach diverse students representing
all strata of the University community.
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Photos
by Mike Drazdzinski, CIDDE
Pete Simonson |
Like most required courses,
my large, introductory-level Rhetorical Process course attracts a diversity
of students representing all strata of the University community. Therefore,
to reach as many students as possible, my goal is to offer something
for all of them. So what do I do in the context of the big lecture,
where it is easy for students to tune out and more difficult for faculty
to monitor their progress? While some of my techniques are specifically
tied to teaching the art of rhetoric, others are “transportable” to
practically any other field.
- Use “teams” or learning groups. In their first meeting, recitation
leaders (being careful to separate close friends) assign students
to semester-long, four- or five-person teams. Teams work toward a
culminating project—a “public campaign” that applies principles discussed
in class. Weekly assignments build toward that project and require
all students to complete work on their own and then to discuss individual
responses as a team. With instruction and monitoring, teams learn
the material together and apply higher-level concepts to practical
problems. Those who are tempted to “disappear” in lecture have peer
pressure to participate, while the best students can help teach teammates
and thus learn the material better themselves.
- Mix the conceptual or “purely intellectual” with the practical.
Throughout the semester, I discuss the history and key concepts from
the classical rhetorical tradition. I present Greek terms like kairos
(the opportune moment) or dissoi logoi (countervailing arguments),
talk about the cultural contexts in which they arose, illustrate them
through everyday examples, and then give students frequent opportunities
to apply them. My aim is to broaden the horizons of the practically
oriented student and to nurture the intellect of the budding scholar;
the application phase gives everyone practice “to think like a rhetorician.”
- Use active learning techniques during lecture. To keep everyone
involved and motivated, I give frequent quizzes and graded informal
writing opportunities during lecture, typically based on questions
I had distributed previously. I also pose questions designed to elicit
oral responses and to generate brief, structured discussions (the
responses are worth 1 to 3 points). I make a point of posing questions
of varying difficulty—simple factual queries; middle-range application
questions; and higher level queries requiring comparison, evaluation,
or conceptualization. Self-reports indicate that speaking and hearing
peers speak keep students of different levels involved and learning
from one another.
- My overall aim is to make the large lecture work more like a small
discussion class, with lots of active learning by the students, significant
potential for peer teaching, and a multi-viscosity conceptual approach
that mixes strange ideas with familiar experiences.
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