A student in the back of the lecture hall leans forward in her seat. A shy freshman raises his hand for the first time. Heads nod. Eyes brighten. The pace of note taking quickens. As a teacher, these small indications that students are engaged can be exhilarating, and no one knows this better than linguistics . 鈥淢any of my students do very well,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hey are good test-takers. They ask questions in class. But then there are those who, for a long time, I couldn't seem to reach. And when I started offering the option to create video essays, there was suddenly a whole new world of talented students that I had never noticed before.鈥�
Dr. Hall has been teaching large lecture classes in the at 蜜桃传媒破解版下载 for over a decade. Years before the ubiquity
of social media, she used technology as a way to foster collaboration by encouraging her students to participate in online discussion groups. 听鈥淏ack then there was a lot of hesitation,鈥� she says听 鈥淏ut now everyone is more energetic and comfortable with technology.鈥� Dr. Hall has always been passionate about supplementing the traditional lecture format with multimedia presentations and interactive projects including blogging and social service assignments, but she worried that a large percentage of students were struggling to produce competent essays. She thought that they just weren鈥檛 understanding the material.
The idea to offer students an alternative to writing a research paper came to her one day as she was helping her daughter with schoolwork. Sofia is a bright eight-year-old who struggles with writing. 鈥淪he has sensory integration difficulties鈥� says Dr. Hall, 鈥淏ut while she has difficulty expressing her ideas in writing, she is amazing at expressing these ideas visually 鈥� in painting, in artwork, in a PowerPoint, in video.鈥� Sofia, says Dr. Hall, has helped her to realize that her students need to be given the opportunity to learn and express themselves visually as well as verbally. 鈥淚 have to remember that they are not all going to be academics,鈥� she says. 鈥淭he most important thing is that they learn the material.鈥�
Dr. Hall has a deep appreciation for the written language, but as a linguistics scholar who studies the spoken word, she also recognizes the value of effective visual and verbal communication. 鈥淚f writing was the only way that I assessed my students鈥� understanding of the course material, then I would miss out on a whole world of student competence and creativity,鈥� she explains. 鈥淢y experiences with my daughter have helped me see this. In all truth, she's made me a better teacher.鈥�
When students in Dr. Hall鈥檚 Language and Gender course were given the option to write a 5-6 page essay or to create a 5-6 minute video essay, over 35% of the students chose to make a video, often with great success. These videos, often shot in the student鈥檚 dorm room, are earnest and well-researched. The students also look like they鈥檙e having fun. One student analyzes the word 鈥榙ude鈥� as a discourse marker. Another, the word 鈥榶o鈥�. From across his kitchen table, the student explains that 鈥榶o鈥� is popular 鈥渂ecause of its linguistic simplicity and flexibility.鈥� The camera then pans to a scene of two college students engaged in a lively Xbox game, a dialog interspersed with liberal exclamations of 鈥榶o!鈥� Each of these exclamations are then isolated and analyzed.
As a testament to Dr. Hall鈥檚 innovative teaching strategies, Hall was recently awarded an ASSETT Outstanding Teaching with Technology Award, receiving several nominations directly from her students. 鈥淚 learned a lot by making a video essay and would love to make more in the future,鈥� wrote one student nominee. 鈥淭hroughout the semester, Kira constantly used videos during lecture.听 This helped me to understand confusing concepts,鈥� said another. 鈥淎s a freshmen, she was my favorite professor and definitely made an impact on me during my first semester of college.鈥�
Dr. Hall's enthusiasm for teaching is genuine. 鈥淚 try to teach through aural and visual modalities, not just textual ones,鈥� she explains.听 鈥淚 demonstrate points in my lectures with multiple examples of language data from television, film, and everyday conversation.鈥� Dr. Hall glances around her room, looking at the computer screen playing a student-created video and the towering shelves of books that crowd her office. 鈥淚 have found that it helps this new generation of students connect to the course material. Plus it makes it fun...and shouldn't learning be fun?鈥�
Article by: Ashley E Williams
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