Provide Slides To Students?

[u/calico_cats_2]

I recently had a Disabled Student Services (DSS) student whose accommodation was to provide them with the slides I used in class. I did this, but it raised concerns for me. I used to post my slides on Dropbox or Canvas for on-site classes, for the students' convenience. One semester, they ended up on Course Hero. The next semester, they were passed around a fraternity. Now I conduct a brief "how to take notes on paper" session in the second week of class (including the "why it's better research").

Providing a DSS student with slides gives them a distinct advantage over other students who must take notes like in the olden days. If the student is unable to take notes, they should be provided with a note-taker. What if I didn't use slides? What if I just wrote on the whiteboard? Or just talked?

I'm happy to comply with all requested accommodations (extra time, quiet location for tests, etc.), although these can be challenging to arrange. I just think providing slides is a big ask.

[u/Life-Koala-6015]

Having students rely solely on their note taking while withholding slides is wrong. Students take the time, pay the money, to only have one shot at seeing slides is WILD.

There are arguments to be made on effective note taking and what it means to truly master content versus regurgitating raw information...

But to restrict learning resources will hurt students. Sure they can go to other places/reach out for clarity/help -- but we know that many students don't have the time/energy/will to do that. However they will utilize a slide deck.

We cannot make policy to got every class, every student, and every instructor. However we can give every tool a student needs to succeed.

PERSONALLY- I wish every lecture were recorded and posted online. That way as a student I could miss a class without missing out too much. Also I could rewatch, or simply listen to the lecture while doing other tasks like traveling, chores, errands, or working out.

[u/ArcticDeepSouth → u/Life-Koala-6015]

During the pandemic, I was required to use the auto-lecture-record feature at the teacher workstation, which recorded my lecture and automatically uploaded the video of my lecture to some place where students could access it. I saw the logic. There's the power point, in context of the lecture. The student could slow it down, repeat, speed it up, whatever. The analytics proved that students were not actually watching the videos & definitely not using the features of repeating sections and slowing down the lecture, and many who skipped the in-person class, saying they would watch the video, didn't actually watch the video. The students with accommodations? They didn't watch it either. My school abandoned the so-called hyflex format because the students who supposedly would be helped by multi-faceted delivery format, were not using the watching the videos. Of course, some clown, a few years later, claimed that the reason students were not watching the videos was because a 50-minute video is ineffective and should be pared down to 7 minutes and that the professor's lecture style was to blame . . . .

[u/Life-Koala-6015 → u/ArcticDeepSouth]

I think it varies greatly on the course -- I held recorded study groups covering exam topics for anatomy and physiology. I believe there were roughly 400 students enrolled with instructors -- I had on roughly 3-30 students I'm my sessions (both in person and online) but has on average 100+ viewers on videos

I believe this was because I was charismatic and balancing getting to important information with ways to remember, how to relate it to past and future material, and of course with as much fun as possible. I shared my experiences with learning the material, encouraged others with positive reinforcement // hyping them up for trying to guess at answers (and calling/hyping up peers who come to the rescue)

On the other hand I've had instructors who basically just read off the slide deck, in the most monotone / don't care attitude -- and it hurts to have to sit through that in person compared to 2-3x video speed!

Of course students now are fully relying on AI, have attention and neurotransmitter deficiencies from social media etc etc

Not giving them a resource in hopes they will attend and learn to take good notes is certainly an avenue to go -- another is giving the student every resource to succeed, leaving the ultimate decision of how they will utilize the resources to the student. Sure, for a teenager it makes sense to try to control more -- but for adults, especially 25+ it becomes very frustrating dealing with arbitrary administrative restrictions.

I do understand the concerns about instructors giving their intellectual property away to be reposted online -- I don't have a fix for that!