Jourdyn Alli

EDCP498
March 23, 2015
Class Observation
I chose to attend a guest lecture hosted by the Department of Government and
Politics. The lecture took place on February 3 at 2:00 p.m. in the Art-Sociology Building.
The professor was Dr. Kanisha Bond who teaches courses at the University of Maryland.
The premise of the lecture was to give the audience a timeline of the #BlackLivesMatter
movement and allowed students to ask questions toward the end of the lecture.
Initial Rapport
Before the lecture, the professor really started out with a strong introduction. She
began with a story about the originators of the movement and the struggles they had to go
through as three black queer women. This really engaged the audience because many of
us didnt know that the originators were a triple minority: black, women, and lesbian.
Although this was a guest lecture and there were hundreds of students in attendance, the
lecturer seemed very comfortable with the students. She even began to call some students
out by name during her lecture who were in attendance.
The Beginning of the Session
The class was pretty packed before the lecture began and it began on time. The
demeanor of the students in the beginning was very attentive because of the introductory
story. Many people came into class thinking they knew a lot already about the subject
matter, but were quickly humbled when she began speaking. In the beginning of the
teachers slides, she laid out the structure of her lecture via an overview slide. This
helped students organize their notes because they knew what was coming up in the
slideshow.
The Class Session
The instructor really ensured that student knew the definitions of key terms
through on-screen definitions prior to their use. Because this was a guest lecture, there
werent any assignments or pre-class readings, but she did refer to the popular
#BlackLivesMatter tumblr page throughout the lecture. Dr. Bond made sure to teach in
two different styles. One where she literally spoke about everything she wanted the
students to learn. Another style was where she used visual aids via PowerPoint to teach
the audience about the subject.
Student Activities in Class
The only activity that was administered was the discussion at the end of the
lecture. The students were very excited to get questions answered that they may have had
over the course of the movement. Many students consider themselves a part of the
movement based on their online participation, so several of them wanted that validation.
As for preparedness, I think students were well prepared with questions because some of
them seemed as though they did a lot of research.

Rapport during Class

The only negative piece to Dr. Bonds lecture is that during the class, several
students began to lose interest. They started off very interested in the topic because her
introduction was strong, but as she started constantly lecturing them, they began to surf
the web and talk among their peers. I also think she spent too much time on the
explanation of what a movement is because it is pretty self-explanatory. I think some of
her slides were very text heavy, so individuals who were taking notes began to stop
paying attention to her.
Final open-ended questions
The beginning of the class had very good instructor-student interactions, but it
began to deteriorate toward the end of the lecture. I think student-student interaction was
poor because there wasnt much of it. It was mostly the instructor lecturing and students
asking her questions. I think students left this class with the impression that it was
uninteresting because of her teaching style.