Description: Classroom preparation activities are activities completed by students prior to their first formal exposure to a topic. Such activities help students to activate prior relevant knowledge and to identify questions that they genuinely would like to have answered. The activities can also give instructors insight into students' understandings of a topic, insight that can be used to guide classroom events.
Underlying pedagogical goals: Making class boundaries more permeable, Getting to know the students
Example - Thought Questions as Classroom Preparation: Explanation from the syllabus: "The fourth component of the design of this class are the "class preparation activities." You will be asked to complete a variety of short "class preparation" activities (30-60 minutes to complete). Activities may include summarizing a reading, answering a thought question, or summarizing your observations about a particular issue. These activities will be designed to get you to think about topics before coming to class. We will frequently start class with a discussion of your responses. These activities are meant to be completed individually -- you are free to discuss the assignment with others, but I expect the write-up to be in your own words. All "good-faith" efforts to complete these activities will receive full credit. Activities will either be due at 8:00 AM (of the day of class) or in-class. Activities due at 8:00 AM will involve electronic submission."
Example - Discussion as classroom preparation: In my graduate course on user-centered design (TC518), I wanted to improve the quality of the discussion of the readings, extend the amount of discussion, and give the students more responsibility for managing the discussion. I accomplished this by requiring students to contribute at least one posting weekly to an online discussion of the readings AND then having students serve as a bridge between the online discussion and the class discussion. Specifically, these students were asked to explore the online discussion and identify themes they thought would be valuable for discussion in class, prepare a position statement that would serve to catalyze the in-class discussion, and facilitate the ensuing discussion. This worked quite well. For example, the resulting discussion focused on topics that clearly interested the students, the class achieved greater depth in the disussion, and I had more opportunity to listen to the discussion and make points I thought should be made. Also, multiple students commented that the requirement that they analyze the discussion and prepare a position statement was a particularly valuable experience.
