Noticing that my students' notes were very sparse and failed to capture what I believed to be the essential points of our discussion, I created a Reading Guide for students to use before, during, and after lecture.

This guide helps students navigate our class discussions by allowing them to pair the pre-lecture video assignments with a framework for taking notes.

First exposure to new material was again at the forefront of implementation. Creating an accessible framework for students to take notes before, during and after class was paramount for student mastery of material.

The framework is modeled after the Cornell Method for note taking . Students are given the opportunity to write out the general notes from our lecture but more importantly are prompted to supply summaries of ideas throughout each section. Moreover, scattered through the guide are places where students can practice solving problems and write outlines of problem solving methodologies.

To be successful in this endeavor I think it is important for an instructor to have a concrete understanding of the learning objectives for a lesson.

By writing out what you would like your students to come away with, you will be able to craft a guide that supports these ideas.

As I constructed the guide, I decided to use a mixture of prompts to develop moments of first contact with important concepts.

For some prompts I let students know that this is a topic I would encourage them to review before lecture

To begin your own classroom example

• My first step in developing the reading guide was to identify the learning objectives for a lesson.
  • For example:
    • Calculate the output elasticity of a productive input
    • Describe the relationship between total, average, and marginal product using a formula
    • Describe the relationship between total average, and marginal product using a graph
• Using your lecture notes, lecture slides or book, write out specific prompts allowing your students a variety of ways to fill in the information you believe to be the most important.
• Engage students with the material or lecture slides in a way that they aren’t hunting and pecking for the information.
  • For example:
    • Have students solve problems
    • Ask students to create their own definitions