ABSTRACT

“One morning many years ago as a young assistant professor, I was lecturing about American history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. It was a trailer course, a required course taught at 4:30 in the afternoon, the dead zone. This was my first real faculty job, although I had taught part-time or as a visiting lecturer at other universities, and I was putting everything into my efforts to make the class go well. I wrote what I thought was an important point in American history at the very center of the blackboard. One of my female students raised her hand, and asked as she was busily taking notes: ‘Professor Fixico, why is it that you don't write on the blackboard in the upper lefthand corner?’ I had not realized that I had put my most important point of the lecture in the middle of the board, and I had proceeded to tell why I thought that it was significant to know and for the students to remember by telling a story about it. To me, it was natural to put the most salient point in the middle of the blackboard so that all of the class could focus on it and concentrate on its importance. However, the student was more interested in taking notes in an orderly linear style.”