Health and Psychology

I read a lot.  About a book a month or two and about 40 journal articles or more each week.  I used to read under the covers with a flashlight when I was a child.  So I'm surprised at how little younger students read. Many don't like to read at all, and many are poor readers.  But when students are in my classes, I have to take into account the fact that they will not read the course material.  This has been true at the last 5 colleges, universities, or other academic institutions I've been involved with for the past 15 years or so. This is true for students pursuing certificate programs, bachelor's degrees, master's degrees and even doctoral degrees.  I have a friend that teaches high school.  His students don't read much either.  That leaves me to wonder what is being done to get students to learn the material.  

Here's what I'm doing.  First, I try to get the classes engaged as much as possible with the material.  I bring in things to make the material more experiential.  When I'm teaching abnormal psychology, general psychology, or group dynamics, I try to get the students to be involved in the same types of activities or case histories we are reading about.  We can do statistics by counting and sorting M&M candies from the fun size bags and seeing how the discriptive statistics help to determine whether or not samples match population characteristics.  We can recreate Ashe's social conformity experiments.  We can run a video project or a board game project through in class groups, or email or social media to exemplify what happens in group dynamics.  We can give students in sociology the experience of a different life by having them budget for their imaginary family.  

Second I think powerpoint is fine but needs to be used sparingly or augmented with highly engaging material such as videos.  I prefer electronically accessible classrooms so that I can link students directly to the same materials I'm covering and if I can export the powerpoint with links included, that's the better option.

Third, while most text book publishers offer their texts in accessible formats, not all schools take advantage of that to have the course texts available as a text-to-speech document through the library.  Most text books are available as text-to-speech for students that have identified as disabled, but not all students will self-identify or even have an awareness of that disability, but many will go to the library, put on headphones and listen to the text if that's a possibility.

Lastly I think that it helps to like teaching.  It makes the students want to learn and makes it easier to bounce back after a difficult interaction with a student.