By Irfan Rifai

Students at universities are required to demonstrate Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, Hard Skills and many other skills in order to fulfill the expectations at the higher education.  The expectations come in various means of tasks. Summarizing is one of those activities  that students of universities  has to do. The idea of summarizing is to get students to read a usually lengthy material and then put them in a more concise, compact version. As a student I remember that I had to write a few summaries of chapters of book and handed them before the classes began. I have to say that the summarizing process was worth doing and that it left me with better comprehensions of the texts and reduced my confusions. And to me, personally, it prevented me from having to ask silly questions.

Students nowadays  were born in the 1990’s  with gadgets in their mouths. The early – constant exposures and intimacy on technology  make them only more familiar with applications stored in the palms of their hands. The intimacy to technology and applications create individuals who are multi – task and expect contents to be available in short texts, visuals or even videos. Through their reflective and academic book, Gardner and Davis ( 2013) identify this group of children as ‘ The App Generation’. The book with many other books on technology – generation Z – or Teaching Methodology , would only strengthen the needs for teachers to adjust their approaches in teaching.

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Considering the contexts of the students, summarizing as a classroom activity, may need to experience some adjustments.  In my Leadership class, I used info graphic to ask students to read a chapter from Gary Yukl’s (2010)  Leadership in Organization book, and summarize it by using a free infographic maker tool. Info graphic is a visual presentation of a knowledge or information. It has been around for years and as it reaches the 21st century that its application is more wide-spread. Thanks to the free info-graphic creators available online.

END OF PART 1

Read Part 2:

– The benefits of using info graphic for students learning

– The methodology of using infographic in the classroom