The intellectual origins of this approach are from such sources as John Dewey, Kurt Lewin, and David Kolb who were astoundingly prescient about the current research on learning and the brain. To fully disclose perspectives and practices, my years as a student of theatre and communication led to bringing theatre practices and experiential exercises to work with faculty and MBA students.
Finally, the foundation for facilitating learning is connection between student and professor. How else to make the classroom a ‘safe container’ for students to participate fully in their own learning except through connection?
Beginnings
Beginning at the beginning: the professor walks into the classroom, puts down her books, turns on the overhead projector and plugs in her computer. She pulls up the day’s agenda on the first page of her slides. At the top of the slide is a welcome to the class, instructions to sit with study teams, and a quote to alert them to today’s theme when they come in. She has answered their fi rst question: ‘What are we doing today?’ They come from another class, or from their jobs. Sometime in the last 48 hours, 90 per cent of the students prepared for today’s class. They turned to the assignment—read the case; prepared the problem set, and so on—and then once completed, set it aside. It is then wiped out of conscious memory, replaced by more immediate and ‘real’ demands of other courses, of work, friends and family. Now as they enter the class, reminded of homework, they retrieve it and hand it in without any thought to today’s lecture. The professor, on the other hand, is full of her topic. She has probably spent the last 30 minutes reviewing what took three to six hours to prepare. She turns away from the side of the classroom where she was chatting about an article she saw today on an employer of interest to two students who came in early.
(A colleague notes that he fi nds a ‘gift’ for his class almost every day in the news.)
How does our professor begin? The beginning is the most critical moment in the classroom. The students’ minds are fresh, relatively open, and willing to tune in. And creating a strong and early emotional connection is crucial—you want to awaken the students and their brains!
For example, one renowned professor at NYU Stern, Economist Robert Kavesh, uses a poem at the beginning of each class.
As she moves into the center, she senses that the class is relaxed and present. She waits in silence for fi ve to seven seconds while making eye contact with someone in each section of the class. The class is in session. Without a word to the class, she has established control. She opens with a provocative statement about her topic, and then she reviews today’s agenda and delivers the punchline: ‘By the end of class today, you will know ___; you will be able to do ___; you will feel ___ about this subject.’ The objectives have been established to anchor today’s work.
She began with the end in mind. By providing a proper frame for the course, the day, and the hour, she ensures that the students will be receptive to what she has to say. All this has been achieved through the use of space, timing, media (blackboard, PowerPoint slides, or an overhead) and the physical presence of the professor. We lead the class in response to our own and our students’ expectations about what should occur: the shape of the class, the structure of course material, and the timing of all elements within today’s context and the trajectory of the course. By remaining aware of these rhetorical elements to make conscious
our choices and our students’ needs, we can do more to manage expectations. We are balancing
the rhetorical decisions with the cognitive and physical needs of our audience.
To begin, the professor should answer the fi rst fi ve critical questions in the minds of every
audience during the introduction:
1. What’s the topic?
2. What’s your position on it?
3. Why is it relevant to me?
4. Why is it urgent?
5. Who are you to tell me this?
The answers to these questions convey more than the topic, they inform the listener of your perspective and your claim to authority. This opening declares what is at stake for both the professor and the student by citing relevancy and urgency for the listener. Now the student can engage with the problem by making associations with what they already know or believe about the topic. Then they can settle down to listen—perhaps suspending skepticism—but, one hopes, remaining open-minded enough to listen.
Such an opening makes the most of the high levels of attention at the beginning of a session. Attention is at its highest level within the first three to five minutes of class. The audience ‘attention curve’ shows us that the highest levels of attention occur at the beginning and at the end of a lecture. Making the most of that few minutes of fullest attention will help the student to organize and retrieve material later, moving it from short-term to long-term memory. For this reason and some other important ones, an indirect structure should be used sparingly. The deductive structure can be very useful to approach parts of the topic, but for the class as a whole, deliver the punchline at the beginning. Stating the objective upfront will enhance the student’s ability to follow your logic and your thinking while making associations vital to their own.
Read More : Teacher as Facilitator of Learning
