Teaching American Government in an Electronic Classroom.

Electronic aids can be used to augment the lecturing process and improve students’ learning exporience when teaching large groups of students at the university level. They can, among other things, stimulate student interest in the material, display the unfolding structure of a lecture, provide students ready access to the instructor’s own lecture outlines, and expand opportunities for students to put questions directly to the instructor. This paper reports on the findings of before and after surveys of 400 students’ attitudes in two classes of U.S. Government toward four electronic techniques: (1) showing short video clips on events in U.S. politics; (2) projecting topic outlines of lectures on a screen during class; (3) providing students the ability to print full sentence lecture outlines; and (4) communicating with students via electronic mail. Student surveys taken before and after both courses show that students viewed the four techniques quite positively, often warming to the techniques during the quarter. Students demonstrated an ability to distinguish between the “best liked” techniques and those “most important for learning.” The sentence outline technique was both the best liked and most important for learning but also contributed to reduced class attendance, which raises questions about its effectiveness. The paper includes graphs of findings and samples of material projected during class or retrieved by students via computer. The before and after surveys used in the study are appended.