What is this, a statistics class or a dentist’s office??

Val has reported success with the following trick:

Get to the classroom a few minutes earlier and turn on soft music. Then set everything up and, the moment it’s time for class to begin, put a clicker question on the screen and turn off the music. The students quiet down and get to work right away.

I’ve never liked the usual struggle with students to get them to settle down in class, as it seemed to set up a dynamic in which I was trying to get the students to focus and they were trying to goof off. Turning off the music seems like a great non-confrontational way to send the signal that class is starting.

6 thoughts on “What is this, a statistics class or a dentist’s office??

  1. This is a completely revolting and crass idea.

    Class is not an elevator. The idea of having to deal with muzak when I am trying to find a place in the theatre makes me cringe, even though I am unlikely ever to go into class (much less on the receiving end) ever again.

    Reminds me of those experiments in driving junkies out of the waiting rooms in railway stations using 'soft music'. Count me among the junkies.

  2. My first year physics prof would simply begin lecturing. On the sole occasion that the class failed to quiet down and start taking notes, he simply bellowed "quiet!" in the middle of his sentence, as in, "A ball thrown upward with initial velocity v-nought has total QUIET! energy one half m v-nought squared. We can calculate the maximum height by…"

  3. X,

    It's not so bad as all that. It would take about 15 seconds for them to quiet down. I just didn't like every class starting with me hushing them up. It seemed like a bad dynamic,

  4. I've seen this done before for a MBA class — the prof played a song before the class, students knew they had that time to socialize, and (because the music chosen was usually pop that the students were familiar with), they also knew when to wrap up their conversations. I only sat in on one class, but it seemed to give a nice, peppy start to the morning.

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