Confessions of a lecturer

I was thwarted by classroom design today.  When I arrived, rather than the little group pods I had made out of tables, my classroom was arranged in straight rows facing the projector screen.  As students started arriving, they asked whether I wanted them to move tables.  In the spirit of democratic pedagogy, I said "I don't know, what do YOU want to do today?"  Someone expressed an interest in trying out rows, and others quickly agreed.  So, we left the classroom in lecture mode.

It's like something clicked in my brain.  I was in front of rows of students.  I had no choice but to talk at them.  They played their parts well, too, by waiting to be called on and looking confused when I finally, late in the class period, asked them to arrange themselves in little groups within their rows.

Lecturing isn't all bad.  Though I felt some guilt about so easily giving up on my flipped classroom experiment, I was also sure that they were exposed to the important material of the day, and I invited a lot of response during the lecture part of class.  Since class was particularly small today (13 out of 22 students!  I imagine the flu and a beautiful day at the Mountain were responsible for that.), it was easy for me to interact with students and to be sure that they were at least somewhat active in class.

I did leave some time for reflection with a very short assignment I've never tried in Logic.  Rather than have students reflect on mistakes in other people's reasoning (it's so easy!), I had them write a few sentences about their own reasoning and fallacies they know they should watch in their speaking and writing.  I'm going to follow up on this, since it's perhaps the most important thing students can learn in Logic--the power of clear, correct, and responsible communication.

Next time, it's back to the pods.