Board notes in class,
originally uploaded by eszter.

We were discussing portals and search engines in today’s Internet and Society class. I had various statistics to show the students, but first I had them guess the figures. I find that this gets them more engaged. Moreover, because I ask them to justify their guesses, I think it gets them to think about the issues more than if I were to inundate them with a bunch of data points without any discussion.

Pictured here is the prize for the winning guesses. No, there is no physical award, just the drawn prize. Today they were a car and a trip to Hawaii. No, this was not preplanned, it just evolved from the interactions.

I haven’t drawn much before in class, but students seemed to enjoy it so I may be adding more cartoons in the future.

A propos cartoons, I already start each lecture with a cartoon on the slides. I try to have them relate to the day’s material. Those cartoons are a “bit” higher quality though being drawn by professionals and all.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 17th, 2005 at 3:39 pm and is filed under Teaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.