This year, I’ve tried a new strategy to learn all the material in lecture. Other than sitting in the front-row in my classes (which is an incredibly helpful tool), I’ve engaged in a somewhat unfamiliar way (at least to myself): I radically raise my hand.
No matter the question or circumstance, my hand is in the air. Ok, well that’s a little bit of an overexaggeration, but the point is that I don’t really care too much if I get the answer wrong. In fact, if I do, that’s great — I just identified a key point of learning that I need to do with instantaneous feedback that I wouldn’t get by sitting quiet.
I used to believe that whether or not I raised my hand that I would still get that instant feedback. Even if I wasn’t volunteering the answer, I would still be able to check my answer against what the professor said. But there’s two problems here: 1. this isn’t true and 2. even if I were to generate a solid answer, it wouldn’t be near the thinking that goes into a hand-raise answer.
The truth is that even when I think I have an idea for an answer, it’s not fully fleshed out. Sure, I have a vague notion of what’s true, but, without actually forcing myself to present that answer, it remains incredibly blurry. With the hand-raise comes the responsibility of consolidating and sharing your idea.
