Capturing students’ contributions on the board

While slides can be helpful for displaying class material, they also tend to be static and relatively passive. Conversely, co-constructing knowledge on the board with students can help make definitions and key concepts come alive. In this video, Paola Arlotta describes how recording students’ ideas on the board engages them in collaboratively “building the class material” and involves them more deeply in the learning process.

Profiled: Paola Arlotta, Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, teaches "Got (New) Brain? The Evolution of Brain Regeneration" to 22 students at Harvard College.

Classroom Considerations

Before class, plan how you intend to structure course content on the board. You might “pre-board” information in advance of class or jot down ideas more organically as they surface in discussion. Either way, a better-organized board is more likely to result from some advanced planning.
Instead of just presenting a definition, ask students to define the concept in their own words first. As students respond, record their ideas on the board so that students feel heard and valued for their contributions.
Use the board to organize and connect ideas and to emphasize particularly important ones. Arrows, circles, and underlines draw student attention to key points.

Relevant Research

Elaborations and student explanations have been associated with positive learning outcomes. This suggests that creating an environment that promotes and values student contributions can enhance student understanding (Kuhn & Dean, 2010).

Related Resources

In his blog post “What Is Good Presentation Design?” Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery author Garr Reynolds describes how to make more effective image-based powerpoint slides
In the video “Leveraging Boards to Synthesize and Summarize” Harvard Business School Professor David Garvin describes how he uses the board to acknowledge and pull together students’ ideas
Derek Bruff, director of Vanderbilt University’s Center for Teaching, describes how he used the board to create a “debate map” that helped students connect their ideas to relevant counter arguments in his blog post “In-Class Collaborative Debate Mapping, or How a Mathematician Teaches a Novel”