This week’s online activity invited the participant to reflect about the online tools available for an instructor to use in addition to his/her (in class) lectures. Nowadays, many possibilities exist and the interesting part of this exercise is to have the participant think about the relevance of the such tools (course website, course notes in a blog style, online forum such as piazza, online blackboard such as WebCT Vista).

In class we saw a pleasant classical presentation about some basic theorems in number theory. One of the aspects of this presentation was to foster participants’ interest with interactive activities such as trying to find patterns and “re-discover” certain theorems. These interactions are in my opinion crucial. Indeed, some experiments indicate that the nervous system activity during a lecture (measured via electrodermal activity) is similar to… watching television; and lower than when studying or doing homework. It therefore seems crucial to have some interactive activities in class. This all the more since we currently see the emergence of online courses (with recorded lectures for example, think about coursera or Khan academy) which makes the fact of coming to class to simply listen at a teacher becomes obsolete. Indeed, in the future courses will have to offer more than what a recorded lecture does!