"The Teaching Archive" shows us a series of major literary thinkers in a place we seldom remember them inhabiting: the classroom. Rachel Sagner Buurma and Laura Heffernan open up "the teaching archive"--the syllabuses, course descriptions, lecture notes, and class assignments--of critics and scholars including T. S. Eliot,…

As this forum's call for papers notes, lecture represents one of the more "controversial forms of instructional communication," yet remains a predominant instructional method in academia. Ironically, instructors face increasing pressure to abandon lecture at a time when these classes are popular and students readily enroll in lecture…

Note taking (NT) in lectures is as active a skill as listening, which stimulates it, and as challenging as writing, which is the end product. Literature on lecture NT misses an integration of the processes involved in listening with those in NT. In this article, a taxonomy is proposed of lecture NT skills and subskills based on a similar list…

Google Docs was used to create the rip-mix-learn (RML) classroom in two, first-year undergraduate introductory chemistry and biology courses, a second-semester introductory chemistry course, and an upper-level developmental biology course. This "transmedia" approach assigned students to create sets of collaborative lecture notes into…

As more secondary students with learning disabilities (LD) enroll in advanced content-area classes and are expected to pass state exams, they are faced with the challenge of mastering difficult concepts and abstract vocabulary while learning content. Once in these classes, students must learn from lectures that move at a quick pace, record…

Lecture is a much maligned classroom method of instruction. Like any other technique employed by educators, there are both effective and ineffective ways to deliver content through a lecture format. Respecting that the college learner has changed, active lecturing strategies maximize student learning of course content, engaging both modern…

Massification in higher education in Sub-Saharan Africa is an ongoing reality that poses particular challenges and opportunities for these nations (Mohamedbhai, 2008). Like Scott (1995), we use the term massification to refer to the rapid increase of students attending higher education institutions in the latter part of the 20th century and into…

Note-taking in lectures is often taken to be the distinguishing characteristic of learning at university. It is typically assumed that this is a commonsensical skill that students either have or will learn through trial and error. The data from a research project in one New Zealand university suggest that taking good notes is not a skill that…

In a study of notetaking in university courses, we found that the large majority of students prefer paper to computer-based media like Tablet PCs for taking notes and making annotations. Based on this finding, we developed CoScribe, a concept and system which supports students in making collaborative handwritten annotations on printed lecture…

A significant image of classroom lectures is the one presented in J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series. At Harry's Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the most torturous class is easily History of Magic, which is, incidentally, the only class in the school taught by a ghost. Being taught by a ghost could be quite exciting: not so in…

Listening is the most important of the four language skills and is used most often in everyday communication. Teachers need innovative ways to address the particular listening problems emerging in their own contexts. "Teaching Listening: Voices From the Field" shares successful practices employed by teachers at different levels of education around…

Students with mild disabilities have a difficult time recording notes from lectures. Accurate note taking is important because it helps students understand the content from lectures and notes serve as a document for later review. In this article, the author describes what teachers can do before, during, and after the lecture to help students…

Students with learning disabilities lack effective note-taking skills for a variety of reasons. Despite the important role that notes play in helping students to understand lecture content information and serving as documents for later review, many students with learning disabilities are simply not effective note-takers. Many of these students…

Twenty years of research shows that using interactive techniques more often can make a class more effective. For example, a study of six thousand physics students compared classes using passive lecture to classes using interactive techniques that allowed for discussion among students and between the professor and students. The study showed that…

Lectures can present barriers to learning for many students and although online multimedia materials have become technically easier to create and offer many benefits for learning and teaching, they can be difficult to access, manage, and exploit. This article considers how research on interacting with multimedia can inform developments in using…