Written notes M 1.2

Lecturer B did not provide printed notes to the students. He chose to write on the whiteboard during the lectures and students copied the notes. He considered this practice important because, as he claimed, it makes students more eager to attend the lectures.

Lecturer B: I never distributed notes and then I had better at- tendance, students were attending lectures were making notes, ’cause I will be using the whiteboard, writing all the way [...] just the usual whiteboard lecture.

Nevertheless, the lecturer had to upload a version of handwritten notes, in addition to other material (exam past papers, solutions, etc.), on the module’s webpage. This happened in order to comply with the university’s policy regarding the resources provided to the students. Lecturer B explained in more detail why he prefers the students to have the notes in this way and he developed his thinking regarding other ways of providing the notes, such as the gappy notes.

things appear and gappy notes is something... artificial. I think the lecture is more natural, because you can see how things ap- pear, what is the logic, how it goes. Also maybe it keeps the pace a bit lower... Maybe it’s just that I am not modern, that’s how I was taught and I like it. [...] they [students] have a feeling, that if they have notes they don’t need to attend the lecture. But in fact in the lecture I say twice more than what is written in the notes, sometimes even body language, the stress is important you know, you say more when you explain, you don’t write everything. I will be talking a lot in the lecture but I will be writing not much. So I will be writing what is necessary for them to have lecture notes but I will be explaining more.

In the first lecture the lecturer talked to the students about all the neces- sary information they needed to know for this module. He stressed that he would be using the whiteboard and that they were allowed to interrupt and correct him if he made mistakes.

Lecturer B: I will be using the white board. Sometimes I may be saying plus and writing minus, sometimes it happens and it is beyond my control. Please then shout, stop me, tell me that it should be plus not minus.

The message that the lecturer wanted to transmit by employing this prac- tice is that students need to be attentive during the lectures and see how the knowledge emerges in order to acquire it. It is a powerful message; by writ- ing on the whiteboard and not providing any printed notes the lecturer made explicit to the students that he expected them to copy the notes in order to

learn and participate in the lecture. There is also high degree of control car- ried through this message. The selected topics that are covered during the lectures have been chosen by the lecturer; the order that will be followed to cover these topics and the required pace of delivering them are also defined by the lecturer. Therefore all the control in this case is with the lecturer. Students’ thinking regarding the way they can have access to the knowledge is directed entirely by their lecturer. They are expected to copy exactly what he writes on the board; the lecturer gives them little opportunity as to write down further ideas or what they think as useful for their learning. We can see here that Lecturer B is exerting even more control than Lecturer A who invites the students to add “extra” notes of what they consider helpful in the gappy notes.

Six of the students talked about the practice of copying the notes from the whiteboard. Jeremy said that this practice kept him more attentive during lecture time compared to the modules in which it is not used.

Jeremy: It just keeps us sort of more attentive... in some of the modules that we don’t write that much I am sort of falling half asleep trying to keep up, whereas in the other ones I sort of have to stay awake and pay attention.

Other students found challenging the fact that they had to copy the notes and at the same time focus on understanding the material taught. One of them, Emily, admitted that even though she was not in favour of this practice it can be useful eventually because the lecturer gave a lot of examples.

Emily: ...despite the fact I have to try and understand and write at the same time he does a lot of examples... which I find to be

quite useful because... the things you learn from the examples are really applicable to the coursework...

Likewise, Owen explained why he did not like this practice. He considered the pace rather fast for learning and understanding (despite the fact that his lecturer has already said he thinks this technique is slower), especially for this kind of material which differed in many ways from school mathematics. However, he admitted that this practice encouraged him to spend more time after the lectures to comprehend the concepts.

Owen: ...it’s a little bit different to what we have been doing previously in A level... he uses the writing down technique and going through it really quickly but I don’t think it works as well as it does in [other modules] [...] I’d say it made me focus more on my time outside the lectures... I am definitely putting more time to thinking outside the lectures so I understand what is happening.

The strongly classified and framed message transmitted though the writ- ing of the notes influenced students in various ways. They all employed the practice despite the fact that it was not their favourite one (compared to the practices that were used in other modules, and the practices that they were used to at school). The students paid close attention during lecture time, which was one of Lecturer B’s main motivations for employing this technique. Furthermore, even the students that struggled to catch-up with the writing of the notes in real time stated that they got benefits from it. Like Emily who focused on the examples to understand better the material taught, or Owen who was motivated to put in more effort outside lectures to comprehend the content of the module. Therefore, we can see here that there

is a need for exploring the students’ identities to explain why the message affects them in different ways. At the end the message had a positive effect in most of them even if initially they did not see it in that way.