Faculty Resources
Teaching Resources
Teaching Tips | Week 5: Making the Most
of the Board
Spring 2009
Whatever type of board you have (whiteboard, chalkboard, projected, or online), it can be an excellent visual aid.
An efficiently used board can:
- help students organize and plan.
- engage visual learners.
- reinforce the most important material.
- provide a place to post student contributions.
Here are some specific examples of board use:
- The module's agenda: write it before class and go over it at the beginning of class.
- Deadlines: write project due dates, including ongoing projects. Gantt charts are ideal for displaying a series of overlapping deadlines.
- Provocative questions: try writing a question before class to engage students as they walk in. During class, if you have a question that takes some thought to answer, write it after you say it.
- Directions: write them as well as say them. Students will appreciate being able to review each step. For those students who are off-track, you can point to the board rather than repeat yourself.
- Critiques: before the critique, elicit the relevant criteria and write each on the board. Then refer to the list of criteria to inform the critique.
- Key concepts of presentations or readings: elicit and record these.
- Links/resources: share these whenever you or students find them.
- Illustrations: draw or post any that will help students better understand the material or assignment.
- Discussions: post student ideas. It is motivational for students to see own their words written, and the visual reinforcement helps other students.
- Mind maps: draw one as the class contributes with key words.
- Involving students: invite students to write on the board. This helps keep students engaged and can help a teacher who is not confident in spelling or penmanship. After group work, section the board, and ask a member of each group to write the results of the work.
Practical tips for dry-erase markers:
- Develop the habit of capping the marker as soon as the tip leaves the board. That will help keep the marker from drying out.
- Separate information using colors. If you don't have colors, section off the board.
Final thoughts on procedure:
Erase often. Before erasing, ask students if they have copied everything down. Some instructors ask for a volunteer to copy or photograph the board and save that document into a PDF (any Mac has this function at the print window) then send the PDF to the instructor to upload to the class web page.
Resources
Florida State University's guide:
Instructional Media: Chalkboards to Video
Examples of visual displays of information
|
