In the first class I taught, Federal Courts, I announced at the end of each class who would be on call the next class. This was the approach that then-Prof. Fletcher (and now Judge Fletcher) used, and I thought it was effective. The theory is that if you know you're on call, you'll be prepared that day.
I didn't have as much luck with it as a prof, so I switched to not announcing any strategy at all, though the first time through it becomes clear that I'm just going across the rows until everyone has been called on once. (Any Iowa law students reading this who are going to be in one of my lecture courses, just pretend you don't know!) Then I move to random selection.
Now, I've heard stories about professors who take a deck of cards and attach students' photos, and then before each round of Socratic dialogue, take out the deck, shuffle it, and pick a card/student.
While I love playing cards, the idea of shuffling the deck seems a little too, I don't know, ostentatious. Then I came across this program, called CallOnMe! that lets you input student lists and then generate a student to be called on randomly.
Whipping out the good ol' PDA in class and pressing the touchscreen is just the height of tech-geekiness, but perhaps I shall have to try it once or twice.
How about this, give each student a random number from 1-100 (or whatever number is appropriate), and then get yourself a 100-sided die from one of the local gaming supply stores. Roll the die until you get someone. It's still geeky in a way, but in a old-school Dungeons and Dragons way, not a high-tech PDA way.
Posted by: Brian T | August 09, 2004 at 05:27 PM
Yeah, I'm sure that the 100-sided die (do they even exist?) is better than the PDA. . . .
Posted by: Tung Yin | August 09, 2004 at 05:43 PM