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Classroom Capture
Homegrown Software Boosts Interactivity at Community College
3/19/2008
Her students' response to FarSightNet has been positive, according to Brenner, a long-time professor. She has seen grades, attendance and student participation all improve since she started using FarSightNet several years ago. Although educators sometimes fear that classroom capture software will cause attendance to drop, attendance has actually improved, Brenner said. Part of the reason, she said, is that a challenging physics class is simply more enjoyable for students when they aren't frantically scribbling notes throughout. Brenner also said that students who are normally quiet have tended to interact more and raise their hands when FarSightNet is in use, perhaps because there's a more relaxed atmosphere that encourages participation.
She also has seen more interactivity and questions from the class, perhaps because students now feel freed from their notes and more able to interact. With FarSightNet, she said, "instead of trying to scribble everything down, [students] can pay closer attention."
And that points up another benefit to the product, the Brenners said--or indeed, to any tool that helps students by recording what the instructor writes down in class. Good note-taking can be a huge challenge in complex classes such as the ones Brenner teaches, which might involve detailed physics or astronomy diagrams.
Joan Brenner said she has been frustrated over the years when she's seen the poor notes taken in class. "When I've looked at my students' notes [periodically], I've realized that what I was saying and what they were getting down" weren't the same thing at all. Other teachers have confirmed to her that student notes are seldom an accurate picture of what went on in the classroom.
Her previous physics students found FarSightNet so useful that the following semester "they practically went on strike, demanding the same [tool]" from their new professor, Brenner said.
Her overall sense of the product is that it is helping students learn more, and at a faster pace, although so far most of her observations are anecdotal. "After all these years of teaching, I have a pretty good sense of what people should be able to do at this level," she said, "and more of them are doing it at this point."
Joan Brenner has also used the software in honors seminars she teaches on a variety of topics that teach students how to perform research, and write abstracts and papers. Using FarSightNet, each student's written material can be projected on a large screen one-by-one for class discussion. "Let's say each student has written an abstract for their term paper," Jeff Brenner said. "We [can] put them up on the screen and collectively go through an annotation ... just like you're red-lining a piece of paper."
Linda L. Briggs is a freelance writer based in San Diego, Calif.
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