How to get your students to prepare for class: Introducing Semant and other ideas

Presenter: Professor Matt Davis (The University of Queensland)

A key element of active learning in the classroom is removing the "knowledge transfer" part of lectures, and with the extra time, getting the students to participate in "sense-making" activities.  However, in order for this to be successful, the students must come to class prepared.

This talk will discuss what it is that we want our students to do before coming to class, the difficulties they have with doing what we ask, and how to help them prepare in the most effective manner.  I will also demonstrate the use of Semant, a tool that has been developed at UQ to help efficiently mark and gather information from pre-lecture reading quizzes.  Various versions have been in use in physics classes for a number of years, and it is now used in first year engineering (ENGG1050) and maths (MATH1061).