Maximizing learning in an conventional undergraduate class

In this relfection blog, I am considering a traditional class room teaching set-up where a teacher uses blackboard and his experience in transmitting knowledge to the class.

As a part of this reflection writing, I was sitting in a physics 1112 class taught three times a week. This class is held in a large lecture hall with around 120 undergraduate students. Typically the students are freshman or sophomores who are required to learn basic physics before completing their major degree. Its interesting to see them in a theory class where there is a less probability of individual attention from the lecturer as compared to a lab where the teacher to student ratio is better.

Firstly as the lecture class is large, almost all the rows in the front were occupied and in the last rows there were more unoccupied seats between the students. The lecturer was teaching by looking at the entire class but in my opinion his eye contact was not enough to grab attention of the students in the class. The lecturer wrote down the topic on the board and then looked at the students and explained the concept. In my opinion due to the nature of physics concepts, the teacher did not have time to write the entire definitions on the board. The content written on the board included the topic names, formulas, diagrams that were important in explaining a physics concept. The students had an opportunity to take notes as the teacher spoke and more importantly it is essential for them to note down all that is written on the board.

I realized that the students sitting in the front rows were less probable to get distracted due to their proximity to the teacher and less visual distractions. Students sitting in the immediate front rows were busy with listening and note taking and did not have their text books open where as some students at the middle rows were observed to look through the text book along with note taking. The students sitting at the last rows were seen to have laptops open with non-physics related topics on the screen. In my opinion, they were more probable to miss out on the lecture notes as the volume of the lecturer faded off coupled with more chances of getting distracted by seeing a large number of students sitting in their front view. Another disadvantage of students sitting in the last rows is that on the last rows, there are more vacant seats between students (as compared to the front seats) and students don't have a chance to look at neighboring students notes. Ultimately if a student sitting on back rows misses out on some notes, he has very less chances of making it up from the neighbors notes.

From my experience of this class, I think its wise to sit in the middle rows where there is a probability to see neighbors notes and also look at the text book as the lecture is going on. Also a little distance from the lecturer gives an opportunity to talk with neighboring student to clarify an concepts being taught in the class.