Preparing students to learn

I stopped on the fourth paragraph while reading the blog by James Lang. In this paragraph, he recalls the message from the teaching guru, Kevin Bain. I believe the claims of Bain. I also think there is little impact, if it has any, on the coverage of the materials and student learning. Recently, I asked students about their learning experiences in lectures where a lot of stuff was delivered in a short period of time. Apart from being very smart in aural learning and prepared-in-advance students, the rest will struggle to catch up with the information painted (put) on slides (slides over slides).

How can it be delivered since there is no appropriate delivery time? How much time could students spare for a unit or two? The answer could be – there is no scientific way of making such a decision. Going back to the first paragraph, where James sets the background of the situation. There are looming situations at the start of the semester – you do not know the students, do not know how much they know and how much they need to know.

Looking at both sides of the teaching and the administrative load, it is challenging to decide where to focus on making students learn effectively. Given the limitations of time and resources, the easier option in modern teaching could be adding slides over slides and texts over texts. I wonder if students will utter loudly and say, ‘Stop adding more slides; you have enough slides; can you please help us to contextualize the knowledge?