I have taught in Canada, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. I found out this is the common problem regardless the region. Students tend to focus on achieving a good grade rather than wide knowledge of the subject.
that's true. Even I have been experiencing the same problem. What I did was for this kind of problem, I reduced the contents of the slides as well while I teach, touch only the main point and give the references (book or any online resource). and some quick questions on that session in order to knowledge sharing !!!
Adding to Ahmadh's points, you may make groups and ask students to prepare 2 or 3 slides on each topic to be discussed.
Lecture slides should be designed in such a manner that they would aid instructor while delivering lecture and should be less helpful to the students to study but averagely helpful to revise. e.g. instead of giving definition of a term on slides just mention the term and a slide mentioning adv. & disadv. of some scheme helping them to revise quickly.
Classroom tutorials are to be encouraged such that for good grades, students are required to go to text and read it carefully to answer. If one bright student prepares the answers then others tend to copy so questions need to be different.
Mini competition also helps where on a given concept, students are asked to write the whitepaper and present it too. The percentile students receive with this activity can be added to the overall marks. To add interesting flavour to it, a panel of instructor and students will cross question to measure the level of understanding. Instructor is required otherwise pre-planned questions can be asked by friends. To avoid this, on the spot nomination of the panel member also helps.
This way, students keep reading different materials (under the threat of loosing grades though).
In other words, questioning needs to be different otherwise focus will be there to get good grades than knowledge. Students should find it difficult to answer unless they really know about the concept.
Dear Shafig,
I used to tell the same. But they replied me by saying they like my slides better than a book, straight to the point and easy to understand than a book ... ( very unhappy moment). If I make my slides to be unclear, they will complain saying my slides are not good and unclear (also unhappy moment)..
Shafig,
I totally agree with you. The taste of reading a book is not same as the taste of reading slides, it just like eating bones. I think the major issue here some of our students do not have a culture reading. A person who enjoys reading will read anything given to her/him.
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