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I used to post my slides before a class. But I noticed that many students simply read it while in class instead of listening . So I am thinking not doing it in the future. But they can still get it from students who have taken the class before.

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    One advantage of posting before class is that students (with the right software and skills) can add their own notes to the slides. – Joseph O'Rourke Jan 11 '22 at 00:04
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    If students are reading the slides (instead of, say, doodling), it means that they are processing the knowledge at their pace instead of yours. Are you certain that's a problem? – Matthew Daly Jan 11 '22 at 00:07
  • @MatthewDaly Yeah, sure, could be that I went too fast for them. –  Jan 11 '22 at 00:17
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    Sounds like it. If they're reading slide 4 when you're up to slide 6, that means that they aren – Matthew Daly Jan 11 '22 at 00:59
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    Slides first. You need to read the manual before operating the machine. – Sufyan Naeem Jan 11 '22 at 13:02
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    Perhaps it’s what is on the slides and how you are using the them. Class should add something to merely reading the slides, and it should feel to the students that they want to get what the class adds. A pitfall of slides is that the medium makes a certain pretense to presenting (all) the critical information, whether true or not. [In my classes, my students are general interested in A. doing well, B. learning, and C. often both — that is, they are good and want to be good. So if their behavior in class is in my view not good, it’s probably my fault in the way I conduct classes.] – user1815 Jan 11 '22 at 18:29
  • @Raciquel Then, what is it that I can add in a class? That is what confuses me. –  Jan 12 '22 at 03:04
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    Why do you think you need to upload them at all? Let the students take their own notes. – Rusty Core Jan 12 '22 at 17:37
  • When I was an undergraduate, we didn't have slides, and we students had to take notes for ourselves off of a three-part chalkboard where one part slid vertically to cover up one of the other two parts. Something like this: https://claridgeproducts.com/product/vertical-sliding-systems/ – shoover Jan 17 '22 at 04:05
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    If you don't upload the slides before the lecture, then wouldn't your students also be reading the slides (on the screen) during the lecture? Do you want to prevent that? – JRN Jan 20 '22 at 05:24
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    You are over-optimizing. Post the slides when it's convenient for you (e.g., when you've completed them) and move on to other tasks. It's ultimately the students' responsibility to learn the material, whatever is best for them. – Daniel R. Collins Jan 21 '22 at 14:35

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Then, what is it that I can add in a class? That is what confuses me.

That is the exciting part about teaching mathematics. No matter how clear the slides (or book or ...) and no matter how complete the proofs, there is a big role for helping students understand. I'll answer your comment rather than the question, as it seems that you would really like to upload slides ahead of time.

Here are some examples of things you can do instead of read slides in class, in rough order of increasing distance from "reading the slides". This is by no means comprehensive.

  • Do an example similar to one you've prepared, but with some different twist (not necessarily just different numbers). For instance, if a slide shows a simple matrix multiplication, have one where the multiplication is commutative. Or where the multiplication doesn't even exist in the other direction!
  • Better: have the students do an example that is similar, but different! For instance, perhaps your slide has a row reduction to a degenerate matrix, but the students are given one (or several split up among groups!) that might or might not be nonsingular. See what they get.
  • Have a quiz based on a few of the slides at the beginning. Then you aren't just posting the slides ahead of time, you're expecting they will look at them. (I don't really recommend this with slides, but with a video this could work, and a lot of classroom management software now supports embedding basic types of quiz questions inside of narrated slideshows ...)
  • Help your students discover your theorems in class using inquiry-based (or one of the many other names for this) learning. You can still do this with a "slides" as your main source, though in this case posting slides afterward might be a better bet ... and as you can tell, this is now pretty far from a slides-based lecture pedagogy.

I'm not sure what level (nor in what cultural milieu) you are teaching, but these can be translated to many different environs. You may have to "sell" new pedagogies to students unfamiliar with them, but, in my view, this is worth the effort. That, of course, is a big enough discussion for several other questions.

kcrisman
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