Student Learning Assistants and Giving Up "Professor Power"

Abstract

I was already using clickers and fill-in the blank powerpoint lectures with examples, but the students were just sitting there frantically trying to write it all down.  I asked myself, “Is this learning?” I wanted the students to DO and THINK about the concepts and work-out problems that were NOT plug-n-chug, and to facilitate this is I needed student Learning Assistants, one Learning Assistant per section of twenty-four students, in addition to clickers, high-level explain/show questions, and collaborative group learning.