Colleges Looking Beyond the Lecture

[FarCenter]

Science, technology, engineering, and math departments at many universities are redesigning the lecture as a style of teaching out of concern that it is driving students away. Initiatives at American, Catholic, and George Washington universities and across the University System of Maryland are dividing 200-student lectures into 50-student studios and 20-student seminars. Faculty also are learning to make courses more active by asking more questions, starting ask-your-neighbor discussions, and conducting instant surveys. "We need to think about what happens when students have a bad experience with the course work," says University of Maryland of Baltimore County president Freeman Hrabowski. The lecture backlash signals an evolving vision of college as a participatory exercise as research studies have shown that students in traditional lecture courses learn comparatively little. The anti-lecture movement is fueled by the proliferation of online lectures, which threaten the monopoly on learning by self-sufficient campuses. Other scholars are looking to improve, rather than replace, the lecture model. For example, Johns Hopkins chemistry professor Jane Greco records her lectures and posts them online as homework, and uses her time in the lecture hall as an interactive discussion of the lab experiment students completed the previous session.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/colleges-looking-beyond-the-lecture/2012/02/03/gIQA7iUaGR_story.html

[no_hypocrisy]

1. My guess would be that the "anti-lecture" sentiment can be traced to diminishing

attention spans of Generation Y-ers rather than their yearning for the Socratic Method.

[FarCenter]

2. Lots of STEM students are visual learners

So listening to a professor lecture at the front of a large hall is a very difficult way to learn. The babbling goes in one ear and out the other. Then you go to your dorm room and read the text to find out what it was about -- unless there is no text...

Besides, the large lecture hall experience is just as well delivered on-line, and possibly is better on line, since illustrations can be improved and since the student can rewind, pause, etc.

[exboyfil]

4. Engineering school should be working problems

Lots and lots of problems. Working them clearly so that each step is documented (no a Miracle occurs).

Give you an example. Lecture I at MIT for Calculus I (you can see the video). The Binomial Theorem is used to describe the h + delta h - the higher power terms are cancelled as the limit is taken. Insufficient background was given for the Binomial Theorem and how it was being applied.

[FarCenter]

6. There is also a need for projects and more attention to synthesis and design

Attending lectures is a solitary activity, while science and engineering tend to be collaborative and team occupations.

Engineering needs skills in analysis, but it also requires skills in synthesis and design to associate multiple concepts and create new results.

[Igel]

5. Beyond the "learning styles" crock

(more students use it as a weapon to avoid learning than use it to increase learning; administrators use it as a weapon to blame teachers instead of parents or students for poor learning)

... you need to consider who they want to take STEM courses. If you need to have the less prepared student take courses they're not ready for, you need to show them. The math doesn't mean anything; words don't mean anything. In many cases there's an experiential deficit to be overcome. "Big Idea" learning is handy for those who really can't follow the details.

That, and attention span problems.

[Posteritatis]

7. A heavily discussion-based class requires a lot more attention than a standard lecture.

Of course, they're also more difficult to manage, and don't work as well with a 200-student intro course, never mind those thousand-student monstrosities.

I suppose we can take the Kids These Days Suck approach if that satisfies people emotionally, though.

[FSogol]

3. They could just tweet video links to each other in lieu of lectures.

Suddenly, my future job security is looking good!