1. What’s up with all the blanks in the online lecture notes?
I used to post full lecture notes--but a funny thing started to happen. Fewer and fewer students showed up for class. A couple of times in my small summer classes, no one showed up! :-(
So now, applying a bit of psychology, I blank out important words in the lecture notes to encourage students to come to class, and also to turn note-taking into active learning.
2. I missed a class! Can you send me the lecture notes?
My policy is to get you to ask someone in class. That way, you can:
If I were to give you the fill-ins, that’s all you would get--and you’d be missing all of the other things that I talk about in class. (Yes, some of the things I say beyond the lecture notes are important--they may even be on an exam!)
3. But I missed class for a really good reason. Can you send me the fill-ins now?
What do you do in classes that have no online lecture notes? Borrow the notes from someone else in class, right?
4. But I don’t know anyone in class. Can you send me the fill-ins now?
The University is a big place, with lots of people. But although you are surrounded by people, you may not get to know a single person in any of your classes--unless someone makes the effort (hint, hint).
It’s a good idea to get to know someone else, in case you (or they) miss a class. That way, you can contact each other to find out what you missed. I’m not asking you to become busom buddies or lifelong pals, and I’m not telling you to give out your home address to a stranger and invite them over for dinner. Maybe try exchanging email addresses.
As a means of last resort, I may set up lecture note sharing forums on eClass. If there is enough demand, I can do that again--but I do so hesitantly. By making it easier to get notes online, attendance in class declines. Here’s why that matters: A meta-analysis by Credé, Roch, and Kieszczynka showed that, “class attendance [is] a better predictor of college grades than any other known predictor of academic performance, including scores on standardized admissions tests such as the SAT, high school GPA, study habits, and study skills” (2010, p.272). Yup, you read that right: Going to class is a better predictor of class grades and GPA than factors like study habits or study skills.
5. Why don’t you highlight or underline the missing words in your in-class slides?
That’s a great suggestion. It doesn’t work. I tried underlining the “fill-in” words in a class once, which resulted in many students having conversations in class instead of paying attention. It was so disruptive, I’m never going to attempt that again--sorry.
By the way, I also also tried posting all the fill-ins right before the midterm, but this caused a sharp-dropoff in attendance, as well as an overall decline in grades (!).
6. Why are you treating us like babies with these fill-ins?
I’m disappointed you interpret my effort this way. In university, it’s your decision whether or not to come to class. I’m trying my best to teach my courses in an informative and engaging way--and to try and motivate you to learn. Not everyone likes learning the same way, however. (By the way, getting you to fill in the blanks is part of a pedagogical approach called “active learning,” which has been shown to enhance learning.)
If you really don’t like the fill-in approach (or feel that I’m going too slowly) you don’t have to use the notes, you can write them down longhand--it’s your choice.
7. Why don’t you post your lecture notes as PDFs? (Or PowerPoint slides? Or Word documents? Or LaTeX?)
It was a conscious choice to post my notes as HTML on the web. It is one of the most flexible formats, in that it allows me to do some neat thing. For example, in my Advanced Perception lecture on Perception and Art, you can click on a small image of a painting and it will use Javascript to open a large, high-resolution version of the painting. (Try doing that in PowerPoint.) You can print out the notes with different font sizes. (Try doing that in PDF.) HTML tags can also facilitate the use of screen readers by visually impaired or blind students. (Try doing that in Microsoft Word.)
Further, research evidence has shown that providing complete PowerPoint slides in advance may not help learning (Kim, 2018) and can even cause a decrease in student performance (“Outcomes revealed that access to slides developed by teachers had a negative impact on student performance and attendance to classes”, León & García-Martínez, 2021). I would be derelict in my duty as an instructor if I knowingly applied pedagogies that have been shown to have a negative impact on student performance.
So the answer is: No, I will not post my notes in any other format.
8. I can’t write in those tiny blanks. What can I do?
I’ve designed my web pages to be resized. All you have to do is embiggen the font size, and you should have plenty of room.
Adjust to your preference. The notes should now print in this adjusted size.
9. I’d like to load the notes into my computer and type the words in the blanks. How can I do that?
You can copy the notes from your web browser and paste them into your word processor. However, you may lose much of the pretty formatting that I worked so hard to create. A better way is to start your word processor (like Microsoft Word or the free LibreOffice Writer). Go to File - Open and paste the URL (e.g., http://www.ualberta.ca/~kloepelm/104/p104s01intro.html) of the notes page you want, instead of clicking on a file name. This will retain the formatting.
Here’s my super-short YouTube video How to Load Online Lecture Notes into your Word Processor if you still can’t get it to work.
Microsoft OneNote works a little differently--the File - Open method will not work. Instead, you can either a) first load the lecture notes you want into Microsoft Word, then go to File - Print, and under Printer select Send to OneNote, or b) open the page of lecture notes in your browser, then select everything on the page (Ctrl-A in Windows), copy (Ctrl-C), and then paste (Ctrl-V) into a new OneNote Notebook.
If your word processor cannot open URLs (e.g., Apple Pages), I cannot help you. I guess try copying-and-pasting from the lecture notes?
Getting lecture notes into Google Docs with all images and formatting intact is more difficult. You can try the Save to Google Drive Chrome extension, but you’re on your own with that. I have taken you as far as I can go. It is up to you now to forge your own path...
10. I kept all my notes on my computer and it crashed. Will you send me the fill-in words?
Haven’t you heard about making backups? Store your data in the cloud with (free!) products like SugarSync, DropBox, Box, or Google Drive. Copy your important files to a cheap USB drive.
Saying that you lost all your data because it wasn’t backed up is today’s equivalent of “my dog ate my homework”.
11. What is this “fill-in” technique called?
I call it the Modified Cloze Procedure for Instruction (MCPI). It’s named after the Cloze procedure (Taylor, 1953). I adapted it from its original purpose, measuring readability. It’s my (small) contribution to pedagogy (the study of teaching methods and strategies). This words stems from the Greek paidagogos: “slave who took children to and from school”. But don’t be asking me for rides home, OK?
References
Credé, M., Roch, S. G., & Kieszczynka, U. M. (2010). Class attendance in college: A meta-analytic review of the relationship of class attendance with grades and student characteristics. Review of Educational Research, 80(2), 272-295. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654310362998
Kim, H. (2018). Impact of slide-based lectures on undergraduate students' learning: Mixed effects of accessibility to slides, differences in note-taking, and memory term. Computers & Education, 123, 13-25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2018.04.004
León, S. P., & García-Martínez, I. (2021). Impact of the provision of PowerPoint slides on learning. Computers & Education, 173, Article 104283. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2021.104283
Taylor, W. L. (1953). Cloze procedure: A new tool for measuring readability. Journalism Quarterly, 30(4), 415-433. https://doi.org/10.1177/107769905303000401