Throughout my years at Eastern, I have experienced many different teachers and teaching styles. Some professors lecture, other use PowerPoint and some even send you out to learn by doing.

I have taken several classes where the teacher just stands in front of the room and reiterates everything I was supposed to read in the book. Yes, I can learn this way, but it makes it harder to go to class when the teacher is strictly going to stand and talk.

Other teachers spice it up by using a PowerPoint to go over the lecture. This can be helpful, but I still feel like I only remember the information to get through the test, and then it is all gone.

However, the teaching style I find most effective is hands-on learning. For a sports writing class I took, the professor had the class cover an actual sports beat for Charleston High School.

We had to cover a certain number of games, find feature stories and do season previews. All of the stories had to be posted online with photos. We were given strict requirements and deadlines to meet as well.

Instead of lecturing during class, we would go over our stories and get critiques, and use class time for working on our beats if we needed it.

The class involved a lot of work outside of the classroom, but I learned so much more than I would have from just sitting in the classroom. I got hands on experience and clips I was able to add to my portfolio.

I still use some of the things I learned and did in that class. The hands-on learning was a lot closer to what I would experience in the “real world” than the lectures were.

In a class I am in now, we have to write editorials and columns for the Daily Eastern News. The class focuses on opinion writing, so the professor is getting us to actually write for the paper. This is also a hands-on learning experience that provides me with experience in the field I want to study, and will also give me more clips to add to my portfolio.

There are many different teaching styles and one is not necessarily better than the others, but hands-on learning has been the most effective and enjoyable for me. I have taken so much more from the classes that force me to apply my learning than I have from the classes that just force me to memorize information for a test.

I definitely believe that my hands-on classes have prepared me for what I would experience at a job and in my future endeavors.

Abby Allgire is a senior journalism major. She can be reached at 581-7942 or at [email protected].