Why It Is Not a Good Idea to Dictate Notes in the Class?
While taking classes, most teachers dictate notes to make students keep track of important information, ideas, and illustrations. But a teacher cannot spend more time in explaining a topic or concept to students while dictating notes. Also, students often find it daunting to prepare high-quality notes while focusing on the lecture. A number of studies show the decreasing significance of note dictation in classroom environments.
According to Teaching Information, “Dictation is seen by many teachers as somewhat old-fashioned, a relic of the grammar-translation method that dominated language teaching until the last couple of decades of the 20th century. For many people, it brings back unhappy memories of dull, uncommunicative and often difficult lessons, where the focus was fairly and squarely on the accuracy of language.”
Many teachers these days prefer sharing notes instead of dictating notes. They take advantage of the latest digital communication technologies to enable students to access class notes or lecture notes without putting extra time and effort. Many websites and mobile apps even allow teachers to share class notes with students from various universities and regions. There are a number of reasons why teachers must switch from dictating notes to sharing notes.
6 Reasons Why Teachers Should Share Notes instead of Dictating Notes
1. Avoid Killing Classroom Time
While taking a class, teachers need to explain a concept or topic in a specific amount of time. They have to explain the concept and dictate notes in a predetermined time frame. When a teacher dictates notes, she cannot allocate more time to explain and discuss various aspects of the topic. Hence, a teacher can easily teach a topic elaborately by sharing notes with students instead of dictating notes.
2. Make Students Focus Only on the Lecture
The information posted on various websites suggests that note-taking is an art. No student can make high-quality lecture notes without mastering the art of writing while learning and listening. Often students find it difficult to focus on the lecture while taking notes. The teachers can easily make students focus only on the lecture while attending classes by sharing the notes with them.
3. Enable Students to Track All Important Information
The lecture notes help students to track and remember important information, concepts, and ideas shared by the teacher. But a student may not capture all important information while making lecture notes physically. Often students have to put extra time and effort to review and update the lecture notes. The teachers can make students track and remember all the important aspects of a topic by sharing notes.
4. Facilitate Conceptual Discussions
A number of studies have highlighted the importance of encouraging students to participate in class discussions actively. According to Study.com, the teachers must engage and involve students in class discussions to reap a number of benefits — add interest to the topic, reinforce learning and make students know that they are on the right track. It becomes easier for teachers to facilitate class discussions and persuade students to participate in class discussions when they do not dictate notes while taking classes.
5. Make Lecture Notes More Impactful
A slew of studies suggests that a teacher can easily make the class notes more impactful by embedding images, graphs, drawings, and visuals. The visuals help teachers to represent concepts more clearly and students to remember important information. But the students often find it daunting to create the visuals while taking class notes manually. The teachers can easily make class notes more useful and impactful for students by sharing instead of dictating.
6. Motivate Students to Prepare for Classes
The Center for Teaching advises teachers to make reading assignments at least two sessions before they will be discussed, and preview the reading for them to encourage students’ natural curiosity. The teachers can easily motivate students to prepare for the next classes by sharing class notes in advance. The class notes will help the student to read the topic before attending the class. Also, the initial information sharing will help the student to ask questions, clear doubts, and participate in class discussions.
The online platform provided by LectureNotes.in enables teachers to share class notes or lecture notes with a large number of students. Over 15000 teachers already take advantage of this online platform to share notes with over 500000 active students. The online platforms help both teachers and students to focus on lectures exclusively by removing detection from classroom environments.
