Kate: Can you give me an example of a teaching and learning approach that you’ve found beneficial?
Joe: Well a lot of the maths lecturers, some print off the lecture notes and hand them out before the lectures, and some just have them available on the internet. We don’t really use WebCT in the maths department, they just use a web page and publish the notes in pdf and you can print them off before you go to the lectures. And that’s the case with nearly all maths lecturers.
Kate: So you’re printing off and looking through before you go to the lecture?
Joe: Not really looking through before, just reading through as the lecture progresses and then being able to annotate specific bits.
Kate: And anything after the lecture?
Joe: Not really for me. There was one lecturer, he’d have the notes on pdf and he’d have them on his computer, and as the lecture went on he’d project it on the whiteboard behind him and as the lecture went on he’d be able to write on the pdf with this particular program he had...
...and then he’d be able to compile a new pdf out of that which he could then publish with all the annotations on as sort of diagrams, which you can’t really do typed, but you have to draw them, and some maths that you have to draw because typing it is very time consuming.
Kate: So this lecturer would actually annotate the notes, the pre-prepared notes, in the lecture and then make these available to you.
Joe: Yes, a lot of lecturers annotate the notes in lectures, they have sort of the overhead projectors and write on the slides, but of course they can’t be made available afterwards, whereas the fantastic thing about that was that they were on the internet several hours afterwards.
Produced: June 2007, in collaboration with the University's Promoting Enhanced Student Learning (PESL) initiative.
This video available in: Teaching: Handouts (student perspective)