This is the area where we use all of what we’ve gathered from the past three blogs to lessen the redundancy of lectures and help students draw more value from the coursework given. Here’s how we can do it:
Move lectures and note-taking to something done at home – This is the end-goal utility of the lecture videos. I’ve found that taking notes in class can lead to worse notes due to external factors such as the speed at which the material is taught, the peer pressure that prevents students from asking the number of questions needed, and even the ability to read the board. Having note-taking assigned as homework helps to fix this by limiting the external pressures outside of the school’s control. This will increase the chances of a student understanding the topics being taught in class. Here’s what the restructuring will look like:
- Have the notes taken from the lecture videos be homework – the switch to this isn’t that much, it’ll just be placing the lecture videos in the homework section. The homework will be graded with the class work as participation. The goal of homework and class work is to act as practice and should focus on the student’s engagement.
- Have homework assignments be an in-class activity – playing with the subject in a setting where an instructor can help you understand the concepts can go a long way in aiding a students’ learning. The help papers created in the second blog post should be used whenever possible. It’s hard to set a concrete formula for this area due to the high variability in class structures, but breaking down a topic is a great way to teach students and figure out how to help them. Here’s how it could look:
- This can only go to the system you use to give homework. If you have a book and no other system, this is easy, where you can flip it. If you have something like Cengage, you’ll have to collect the in-class work, go to Cengage, and give full marks if the student participated. With Cengage, you have a wide range of options. Other systems will require different approaches outlined in the third blog.
- The work should set out to give the students the ability to notice the problem in abstract environments, interpret a problem beyond the idea of how to solve it, the skills to reason through the steps of a problem, and understand key information in a problem and their relation to the broader subject. Here’s an example:
- “When you create practice problems for me, they should be made in a way that teaches me how to look at a problem, what concepts I should use when working on an issue like it, and have a low focus on my solving the problem. Questions will range from asking me how one part of the question relates to another, to pick out the essential variables in a question, what equations I’ve used in the past that I’ll need to solve the current problem, it will give me equations and tell me to manipulate them and turn them into different equations, the meaning of an equation in broader physics.”
- If possible, have the week be solo work, and the last class of that week have group work. I think this would push students to work harder to understand the topic to then engage with their peers with what they learned.
The main goal of this series was to give a reasonably rough roadmap on how to restructure a class based on what would be helpful to students from my experience as a UWM student.
Written by Rick, an undergraduate student at UWM.
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Relevant CETL Teaching and Learning Resources and Research
The ideas shared in this blog post align with the pedagogical approach of flipping a classroom, or engaging in active learning with students in a classroom which both have proven benefits to student learning, engagement, and sense of belonging (see Allsop et al., 2020; Shaaruddin et al., 2017; Michael, 2006). CETL often hears from UWM instructors that students have no spaces to “fail successfully” and working through homework and expirementing in class while you are available to provide guidance and facilitation gives students the space to learn from mistakes and practice failing forward in their learning. See Rawle and colleagues (2025) for an interdisciplinary review of learning through failure in higher education.