Abstract 3B

Saturday, July 8 4:35pm

Rethinking the handout: Middle ground between readings and puzzles

Bryce McCleary bm59@rice.ed
Rice University, Houston, USA

Many of us lecturers teach introductory courses in addition to areas of specialty. This puts us in unique positions, interacting with both incoming and veteran students. Across the student body, I have noticed two critical changes in student behavior post-COVID 19: A lack of motivation to read assigned readings, though puzzle solving is still popular; And a higher and faster rate of burnout. 

One of the components of class I’ve developed are “handouts”, web-pages on the online classroom (used with in-person classes) with YouTube videos, transcripts, social media posts, local news articles, and questions for discussion. These assignments occupy a space in-between readings and traditional linguistic puzzles. They also employ an online discussion forum where students interact and respond to questions/prompts. In efforts to foster motivation and to put students first in their education, these discussions allow for students to have their thoughts and questions shared, “liked”, and integrated into the class conversation — something in-class discussion cannot do for all students. 

The content of these handouts often coincides with three other pedagogical strategies: 1) Activities or questions that critically address inaccessible language in linguistics and higher education at large; 2) Glocalizing concepts within (socio-)linguistics by looking at examples in global news/contexts in lectures and discussions, then assigning local (to campus, city, region, etc.) data for students to review in “handouts”; and 3) Addressing linguistic concepts both from the perspective of language structure and from socio-cultural contexts (including often-cited concepts of pronouns or Southern dialects, but also mining for more current language regard on social media and campuses). I see these as ongoing projects to help students feel they are not imposters, that they have a place in the field, and that their contributions  are worth considering — hopefully continuing to motivate interests in the scientific analysis of language.