Power of Group Note-Taking-New approach of online teaching

Dr.S.Sundararajan,  Associate Professor-MBA, SIMS

The recent trends of teaching learning practices have reached the new normal. The teaching faculties have upgraded their knowledge and skills through various webinars and online workshops. This article discuss about the benefits of faculties teaching pedagogy through asking students to share note-taking responsibilities. It also passes along faculty’s thoughts on replicating before-and after-online class interactions. Students comes to online classes with a wide range of background knowledge, while others haven’t studied the topic since they are new  in higher secondary. The teaching faculty from higher education institutions like colleges is looking for ways to level the playing field (Outside) and class room (inside) behavior.

New Collaborative note-taking approach

A faculty found an approach which is helpful collaborative note-taking, in which students rotate note-taking responsibilities in a shared Google document. This approach has several benefits such as strengthening students’ note-taking abilities, in particularly letting those with less background learn from their classmates. This creates and owns the note-taking document, a window into how well students understand the material throughout the term which is especially useful at colleges, As students’ schedules make it hard for them to attend learning hours. Shared note-taking also encourages students to collaborate, helping build community in the classroom.

Implementation of new approach

The faculty of the higher education institutions has adopted many approaches and techniques to teach the students in the recent past. But no one technique can accomplish this all on its own. Having students take collaborative notes even changed faculty’s online teaching. The faculty added more consistent structure to his/her online lectures and assignments to help students take good notes. Faculty created three recurring slides, one describing upcoming topics and assignments, one detailing what faculty would cover that day, and one raising a question. During online sessions, faculty has to respond about students writing notes to the prompt at the start of class and discuss their initial answers and whether or not they had changed at the end. Faculty notices that students often includes those questions in their notes, helping them engage in the kind of thinking they may be asked to demonstrate in their exams. Students may have a heightened need for connection with their classmates.

Outcomes of this new approach

Students having a group assignment can bring life and community to what otherwise might be just a discussion during the online class. For teachers, a shared document that all students consult regularly is a good place to provide feedback. Sometimes faculty may think whether the shared notes could enable students to cheat, especially in remote learning. As the holder of the Google doc, teacher is able to prevent students from accessing it during the final exams. Teacher ask questions whose answers aren’t contained there, they can also set harder questions and students going to have to think. After attending the online class from various groups and making group discussion by sharing their thoughts and write their own answers to submit the assignments.

Endnote

This approach gives fruitful outcome and various views of solving their problem in the current situations. The information sharing is main part of this approach the teacher throws lights in the situation the students capture that they think in-depth and finally come to conclusion from their own thoughts.