Students giving feedback

How do you find out how students like to learn? Ask them. That is what the Chronicle of Higher Education did in Nevada recently.

A panel of students answered questions about their technology and reading habits, library use, and preferred way to learn.

Highlights

On Learning:

"When there is a teacher lecturing to you in the front of the room, it is really boring. You do not get involved, and you tend to kind of zone out the whole time. I need more bells and whistles to keep my attention."

On Reading:

"My dad is still into the whole book thing. He has not realized that the Internet kind of took the place of that. So we go to the library almost every Sunday. I actually have a library card, but I have not rented a book for a long time, but I go to our school's library a lot because they have most of the course books..."

On Distance Education:

"I do like it better because people say things in the online class that they would not normally say face to face. Yes, I think it is just more convenient instead of having to go to class every day ... like, they give you a week to do an exam as opposed to one day, or one hour."

"I'm taking communications right now. ... And I really like this class because it is hybrid, which means it is half online and half in person. ... And we go once a week, and all the tests are online. ... We do not have to sit there for an hour and a half, and he has all the PowerPoints online, so he does the lectures in class, and the Power Points are online so just in case you want to go back."

"The research methods, again, does have a tendency to be boring, but he breaks up the monotony in his lectures; he puts little clips from YouTube. ... And they were just comical; they were just funny, and he incorporated the comedy into the lecture itself, and it just made it interesting, and I want to go to class. ..."