The typical texts in my discipline are novels in English and actual text books in Health. In Health, there are also a lot of computer generated graphs and diagrams to demonstrate certain topics. In one of the anatomy classes I took at the University of Utah, my teacher had created his own text book and it was so simple and user friendly-I learned a lot in that class. We followed along with his class lectures and colored each vein, muscle, etc. in as he explained to us what they were. It was so much easier to retain this information by coloring and following along instead of just learning from slide shows or lectures. I think the most unpleasant way I have been taught has been here at college where one of my teachers basically gave us the book and had us read a chapter each week and then take an open book quiz on it at the end. I didn't really learn anything from this class because the teacher was so lenient and did not explain the information very well in class.
Another way that one of my really good professors taught difficult material was by giving us slides that we could print out and fill in information as we went along in lecture. They were very small bullet points so we could take as many notes as we needed to understand what was being taught. the teacher was very good at explaining things also, so it made it easy to pay attention.
I hope to help my students in the future by creating activities to go along with text book information that will help the students understand the information better. I never want to be a teacher that gives the students the textbook and tells them to read it on their own. Instead, I will have them be interactive with me and the other students while learning so that they learn the information through hands on activities and lectures combined.
