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Classroom Management:
Typical of SLCC classrooms, students were seated in a semi-circle, with one large
monitor in front of the room. The computer was located to the left front of the classroom
(students perspective), windows to the left, and door to the right back.
Dr. Medwetsky moved around the room as he presented; but I noticed he spent the most
amount of time at 3 locations; the greatest amount of time was spent about 3-4 feet in
front of students sitting closer to the door, somewhere between the screen and the
computer, and 3-4 feet in front of students sitting closer to the windows.
The RedCat classroom amplification system was utilized in class, with its speaker
situated behind the hard of hearing student, who was sitting close to the door.
I noticed the share mic was not functional.
The HoH student was mildly assertive when she needed repetition by another
students comment; she seem to do well when the comments were
straightforward.
Paraphrasing each students comment would most likely be helpful, not only for
the HoH student but for all students.
Student participation in the class were observed in the following ways:
Intentional design: 2 sets of One Minute Questions were built into the class,
where questions were posed, and students were expected to orally respond.
Posing questions: Questions were posed as part of the lecture. E.g., Does
anybody remember; How many watched the movie [x]?; What kinds of
things can you?; How many of you heard of Piaget?.
All but one of the questions were answered by volunteers. About way
into the class, Dr. Medwetsky asked the one student that had not spoken
yet to answer the question. She answered that question, and did answer
3 more questions voluntarily during the remainder of the class.
Between One Minute Questions and in-lecture questions, all 10 students
verbally answered at least 2 questions each, in 2.5 hrs (mean =3.5
answers per student). This mean does not include the 3 questions that
only required hand-raise (e.g., How many of you?.)
Participatory activity: Classifying phonemes by manner and place involved
students actually producing sounds and recognizing where their tongues are. I
did not count, but it appeared that the vast majority of the class was participating.
Spontaneous: 5 students volunteered to speak, not in response to posed
questions by the instructors, but to make comments or to ask questions.
Positive and affirmative responses:
You bet. Excellent Perfect; nodding; eye contact/smile
Very rarely students provided incorrect responses, but when they did, Dr.
Medwetsky asked follow-up questions to probe the understanding.
After the first break, Dr. Medwetsky was highly attentive to students fatigue. As soon as
he spotted a yawn, he stopped the lecture for a 1-minute break (it was more like 5
minutes). This type of break happened twice.
Dr. Medwetsky had a bowl of candies in class, which was passed around throughout the
class. It seems that students had finished dinner before class, but this slight energy
boost in class seemed to be enjoyed by many.
This is an evening class scheduled for 2 hours and 50 minutes. I observed many effective
strategies, which include planned questioning (One Minute Questions), candy bowl, moving
about the classroom, calling on a student who has not spoken, providing encouraging feedback
to students responses, occasionally turning off the PowerPoint, and taking frequent breaks. It
was apparent that students feel comfortable in the classroom, and that theyve understood the
concepts presented in class.
Dr. Medwetskys intent to create an accessible PowerPoint slides is well-taken. However, the
highly-spelled-out PowerPoint did not seem to lead to students being not on their laptops (and
some were observed with e-mail, chats, or social media browsers open). While this is a
challenge for all instructors, I would like to challenge Dr. Medwetsky to find ways to make the
class more difficult for students to wonder off to the internet world.
Overall, it was a pleasure to observe Dr. Medwetskys class, and I look forward to future
observations.