If you are lucky in this life, you might be granted a moment of clarity that will shake the foundations of everything you’ve believed up until that point and put you on the course for a brighter and better tomorrow. Few people are afforded this opportunity, fewer still more than once. I’ve had three in my life: when I realized I’d spent the past few years unable and unwilling to allow myself to feel or connect with others on a meaningful level and that unless I changed it was going to lead me down a path that would only get worse, when I made the right girl laugh, and just a few weeks ago when a professor mentioned the benefits of assigning reading after rather than before the lecture to aid in comprehension.
Out of respect for the professors’ safety in the coming Faculty Association Civil War that might arise out of this proclamation, I will keep their identity anonymous, but every ounce of my being wishes to proclaim them our saviour to lead us to the better tommorrow I mentioned earlier. If I only had heard the sweet words of wisdom sooner, but alas I was converted only midway through my last semester. The only thing I can do is pass on this realization to you, the next generation of students looking to not only have a better learning experience at this university but also possibly to try and justify our laziness and inability to keep up with the syllabus.
Granted, this general rule of thumb doesn’t work for all programs or course types. I can’t speak to the experience of anyone who hopes to wear a labcoat, practice medicine, build bridges, or use loopholes in the tax system to get out of paying their future employees a fair wage. But, generally speaking, when it comes to the soft / social science courses where we have to talk a lot of theory and translate it into practice this rule may prove useful.
I think the best example would be one of my textbooks, which new would run a student around $180. While it’s a new edition, it’s also incredibly Americanized (contexts and examples that are irrelevant to us) and also goes into incredibly in-depth tangents into material that we will neither be tested on nor need in the field. (I don’t need to know the biological explanation and implications for every type of common STI.) Added up, this means weekly readings average around 80-100 pages or so. Even if you do manage to keep up, half the information never comes up in the lecture or class discussion. Now, if we had the lecture before the chapter was assigned, not only would we get a good overview that could help channel our energy and scope in the readings, but we could also have livelier class discussions as people would be more willing to engage if we start out at the same level. There wouldn’t be that anxiety of being called on to answer something that you’re supposed to know for the chapter you didn’t read.
This isn’t a simple change to make though, instructors would have to reshape how their classes function and make good use of class time to get students engaged with the material presented (that means more in-class discussion and breakout groups) and have their minds ready and primed to explore further in the reading material. It should be a supplement and not just a roadmap to a Scantron. Honestly, at this point I’m ready to advocate for any idea that will shake up teaching styles and habits at this university; there are classrooms in D building that still have VHS players.
