Michael, hard for me to assist you when I have not sat in the class so please take these recommendations with a grain of salt but I will provide what I can. The girls implied that they felt the lectures were boring. Did you take any opportunities to discuss with the remainder of the class? If the majority feel the course structure needed to be adjusted then that is where I would change things up. I had similar situations when teaching some technology courses back in 1999 and was new to working in the Higher Education classroom. Some of my students suggested a new teaching style where I get them more involved and I started assigning specific topics to specific individuals and teams and we allowed them to present some of the materials during the classroom periods. We also included different games such as Jeopardy and gave out simple prizes in the classroom for the teams or individuals with the most points. To make a long story shorter, I had the highest overall retention rate of any class in our system and students would ask to be in my class by name. Not trying to change the focus to me as this is not the intent but wanted to suggest you consider other ways of getting your information out to your students and become more innovative with different delivery methods to reach out to different learning styles. Hope this helps. Happy to discuss more if you can share more of what you have already tried in your classroom. James Jackson