and I’m not sure how I feel.
With apologies to REM and to Bill Paxson in Aliens “It’s all over man!” No more stodgy tweed-jacket with the patches lectures! It’s gonna be quick jump-cuts and machine gun guitar solos! Whoooo! Don Tapscott says so:
The old-style lecture, with the professor standing at the podium in front of a large group of students, is still a fixture of university life on many campuses. It’s a model that is teacher-focused, one-way, one-size-fits-all and the student is isolated in the learning process. Yet the students, who have grown up in an interactive digital world, learn differently. Schooled on Google and Wikipedia, they want to inquire, not rely on the professor for a detailed roadmap. They want an animated conversation, not a lecture. They want an interactive education, not a broadcast one that might have been perfectly fine for the Industrial Age, or even for boomers. These students are making new demands of universities, and if the universities try to ignore them, they will do so at their peril.
I take a backseat to no-one in my pedagogical “web utopianism.” Just in the past year I’ve used blogs, wikis, twitter, diigo, ning, slide rocket, netvibes, and any other Web 2.0 tool I don’t have to pay for. All this in the service of the “engaged classroom.” And when it’s good, it’s good. Students take control of their learning and blow me away with what they produce. But when it’s bad…look out!
But to me the more vexing question is whether we’re losing something profound when we lose an appreciation for the art of the lecture. I had a class this past semester where students had to sit through a lecture beforehand and to a person they came in jokingly desiring to “kill themselves” after having to sit through such drudgery. The faculty, on the other hand, loved it.
Throughout my life, I’ve gotten a lot out of lectures. I subscribe to a number of lecture based podcasts including UChannel and Big Ideas. To me, there is no substitute for someone who has mastered their subject area and can walk you through a topic in 60 or so minutes.
In all of our haste to embrace the learning styles of “digital natives,” we’ve haven’t adequately stopped to reflect upon what doing so means to education in general. For me, I’ve spend a lot of time emphasizing engagement…. but I don’t want to lose the challenge.
Comments 2
Kenneth M. Kambara — June 10, 2009
You're dating yourself, my man. Here's the REM iMeemery.
This made me think of how technology transforms things {culture, systems, institutions, conventions}. The industrial revolution didn't negate agriculture, but transformed it. I see lecture being transformed, as well. Professors and consultants alike will follow the model of "An Inconvenient Truth" rather than "The Paper Chase." Now I'm dating myself. The ante has been upped and the gauntlet thrown down. I'm rather curious how those who fail to adapt will fare.
On another topic, I also think we're in a hybrid area of expectations. I don't think all students are on the same page regarding technologies and the implication. The Web 2.0 experience is about multi-way communications mediated by technology, but if students are clinging to a passive mode of "feed me information," it gets bogged down and less value is created. Part of it is framing the expectations and creating incentives yadda yadda in terms of the pedagogy, but one of the challenges is that not everyone is on the same page.
Erik — June 12, 2009
I agree with you - lectures are still a great delivery vehicle for info on a topic you're interested in. But 20 students in a class aren't going to all have the same level of passion.
As a millennial who also teaches a few classes, I've found out the hard way that traditional lectures don't cut it in a lot of cases (students can snore). But I'm not sure I buy into the sudden need to use social media everywhere. I've found showing relevant, short videos I find on the web helps to combat shrinking attention spans, but haven't had luck in forming an online community for a class. Anything that gets them talking helps. Either way, talking at them for an hour is out the window unless they love the topic. And Ken is right, you can't assume everyone knows the technologies. Most of my multimedia students don't even know what RSS is. Sigh...
Of course, it all depends on the material, the personality of the lecturer, student interest in the topic, etc. I have a couple months to figure out what I'm going to do for a graphic design course this fall. Rambling on about white space and color theory and design principles didn't go over so well last year. Need to reinvent it.