A Brainstorm

I will admit that most of my best teaching ideas just kind of "pop" into my head. I can be sitting around really trying to think of something creative to do, and I won't be able to think of anything. But, if I just relax and not think about things too much, I can usually have a great idea just kind of appear. I had one of those today.

One of the classes that I teach is a computer graphics course. This is a project-based class, and each student is responsible for keeping themselves on track to get each project done in a timely fashion. I am very laid-back, so I don't mind if the students talk A LITTLE while they WORK. However, some students have been talking about 80% of the time, and that leaves a paltry 20% for work. So I had an idea...

I brought my digital camera today, and I took a picture of each student and their screen at the beginning of the hour. I told them that their screen at the end of the hour should look substantially different than this initial picture. In this particular class I use effort as a small part of their grade. So I let them know that this would be how I would truly judge their effort level in class.

I was amazed at how well this worked. After they realized that I now had a way to show how much time they were wasting, they got to work. All of the students stayed on task and were focused. There was still a little bit of the talking today, but that's ok. They were working very hard.

It took very little time to take the pictures at the beginning of the hour, and this definitely is something I am going to do a lot in that class.