MIT Moves Away From Massive Lecture Halls

eldavojohn writes "The New York Times is reporting on MIT's migration away from large lectures as many colleges and universities have. Attendance at these lectures often falls to 50 percent by the end of the semester. TEAL (Technology Enhanced Active Learning) gives the students a more hands on approach and may signal the death of the massive lecture hall synonymous with achieving a bachelors of science."

Comments

remote learning

[escay]

Is this going towards a future where students do not need to be physical present on the campus? they would attend classes from home (or basement for some) and graduate with professional degrees. while that may be well and good for knowledge and proficiency what does it do to learning about social coexistence?

oh well, i guess they could take a class for that too.

Re:remote learning

[Bigjeff5]

Social Co-existance? Why in God's name would you need to learn that at college? Those are life skills, and can be learned in *drumroll* life. Sure, college is a great place to do that, but I would not say the social attributes gained in college translate 100% to working life, more like 50% or less. There is a lot of stuff kids do in college that would get you fired in a heartbeat at a real honest to goodness job.

Social co-existance is not a good reason to go to college, IMHO. Apparently they teach that at some schools anyway (which is completely retarded).

Re:remote learning

[decipher_saint]

I can just see the late night commercial for MIT...

You could learn:
Architecture
Engineering
VCR Repair
Computer Science
Sciences
Management

All from the comfort of your own home!

If you place your order now, we'll send you a tote bag at absolutely no additional charge!

Operators are standing by...

Re:remote learning

[Anonymous Coward]

Lecture halls have nothing to do with being on-campus.

They fell out of the middle-ages mentality where the large lecture was the best way of disseminating knowledge to a group of individuals, specifically because multiple copies of a book were not often available. The "Lecture" format was originally much like the sermon you get from a preacher at sunday services.

Of course, for most of my "lecture" classes, if there were more than 30 students, all the "lecturer" did was read his own damn book (which we had to buy at way-too-high prices) to us for 3 hours every class anyways. I wholeheartedly support the end of the "lecture" format class on this basis.

Re:remote learning

[oldwindways]

Is this going towards a future where students do not need to be physical present on the campus?

Actually, the TEAL approach that replaced the large freshman physics lectures at MIT places a heavier emphasis on attendance. In a traditional lecture the professor doesn't know most of the students, and doesn't really care if 50% of them stop showing up after the first week. With TEAL there are interactive portions of the class (such as answering multiple choice questions with a personal remote) which are tracked and factored into the student's grade. In other words, if you don't show up, you can't get an A (no matter how well you have mastered the material).

Personally I don't think this is the best approach, but it certainly isn't forgiving of a student's absence from class.

As a side note, when I was a freshman, many of my classmates did not find the TEAL lectures to be terribly effective in teaching the material. Frequently they would go back into the video archive after class and watch recordings of the "traditional" lectures from years past to actually learn what was being taught. They just went to the TEAL lectures because they didn't want to loose their participation credit.

Re:remote learning

[Anonymous Coward]

Not surprisingly, some of the TA's were far better educators than the professors they worked for.

Fixed that for you, and please refer to the dictionary entry for irony.

great

[po134]

I've been in 2x150+ classes at my university and it's really a good idea to move from those as the best the teacher can do is read the slides (God they love those at the university) which every student can do on their own at home, there's no "plus-value" of going to class especially when you have 45min of bus each way to get there.

Re:great

[Firethorn]

I have to agree. What's the use of having a class so huge that the professor can't even know all his students, doesn't grade papers(his TAs do that), the student can't necessarily see the screen well or hear the professor.

Questions can't realistically be asked, etc...?

I learned more from reading the book, the slides mostly restated the book. And one of the classes the professor forbid tape recorders* and didn't hand out slides. I have poor vision. It sucked.

*Couldn't exactly hide the mic, I'd have needed a boom.

Re:great

[SatanicPuppy]

I always loved the question part(sarcasm/irony). A lot of my lecture profs would ask this question like, "Everyone who doesn't get it, raise their hand" and if enough people raised their hand, he'd go over the topic again, and if that didn't do it, you had to ask the TA anyway.

My brains a bit odd: when I don't get it, I don't get it differently from most people, so I always had to ask the TA, or figure it out for myself. At that point, there ceases to be a reason to go to the class. Add to that the psychological torment of being the only moron who has to raise his hand twice...Ugh.

Re:great

[MBGMorden]

I don't know. I was in several classes that size when I was in school (both my Physics classes and 1 Astronomy class). Admittedly, the guy doing the Astronomy class was a joke. It consisted of a slide show for a lecture and the "textbook" was his own book he'd written which came from the bookstore as a collection of pages that you had to add to your own 3 ring binder. Given that I already knew most of what was in the class (having taken more advanced classes on the subject already - this was just an easy elective), after the first 2-3 weeks I stopped going and just checked the website and showed up for tests. Ended up making an A+ in the class.

Now, the two Physics classes of this size were MUCH better handled. The professor didn't use powerpoint at all. OCCASIONALLY he'd use the overhead projector, but not for more than 1 slide. Mostly he used the chalkboard (which had a system of pullies to raise/lower 2 sets of 3 boards as needed so there was plenty of writing space available to him) to work out problems, but he also did a lot of straight lecturing, and hands on demonstrations where he'd bring in equipment, call volunteers onto the stage, etc. If you felt like shouting (or sitting close to the front) he was also more than happy to answer any questions the class might have. He was also a very funny/fun professor (as well as a complete jackass, but in an entertaining sort of way). I honestly found those two classes to be some of my most enjoyable I took, and never felt disadvantaged due to the class size.

In general, I think that it's more difficult to teach effectively to a very large class, but it's by no means impossible.

The best educations often don't come fro the bigge

[stokessd]

The giant schools are not the place where the best educations come from. Sure they often have the biggest research budgets and thus are in the news the most. Smaller schools with smaller class sizes are where it's at from a value for dollar spent standpoint.

My biggest class was intro psych and it was 75 folks. My Hydrodynamic instability was four students and the professor. Just try to hide when you haven't prepared with only three other peeps to hide behind.

Sheldon

I don't get the "50% reduction in failures"

[YesIAmAScript]

Why is a 50% reduction in failures a useful stat? The schools want a certain amount of failures in these large "weeder" classes, because giving a diploma to everyone who pays waters down the value of the diploma.

If they wanted to reduce failures, they only needed to move the curve (which was set where it was on purpose in the first place).

Honestly, by the time you get to college, especially ones like MIT, if you can't learn because the environment isn't as cozy as it could be, I'm not sure it is completely the school's job to fix that for you. You might expect that in primary school, but you can't expect it in the world of work, so seems like college is a great place to start introducing people to the concept.

I would have to imagine another flip side of this is the students "don't get access" (whatever that really means in a big lecture) to top professors. Teaching 80 kids at once instead of 500 means you have to run 6x as many classes and professors aren't going to do this willingly. You're probably going to end up with only access to a T.A. (teaching assistant).

Re:I don't get the "50% reduction in failures"

[Animats]

MIT doesn't work that way. If you can get into MIT, you should be able to get through MIT.

Re:I don't get the "50% reduction in failures"

[fropenn]

Why is a 50% reduction in failures a useful stat?

It's useful because it shows that many of the students in the class were not learning anything...which is the point of education.
Having a larger number of people with a bachelor's degree does not make it worth less. Having a large number of people who don't know anything have a bachelor's degree makes it worth less.

Re:I don't get the "50% reduction in failures"

[Dynedain]

Bullshit. If I'm paying $40,000 a year to get an education, I expect that the university do all in it's power to facilitate the education.

Note that they're reducing failures by 50%, not because of aptitude or student ability, but purely by changing the delivery format. Hands-on small classrooms with a low student to professor ratio has been proved time and time again to be a good thing. This is true at all levels of education, from grade school through PhD programs.

In a big class, if you don't understand something, and aren't given the opportunity to discuss it with the professor for clarification, you're far more likely to lose interest and motivation. There's a reason why every university when recruting high school students tries to brag about low student to teacher ratios.

Re:I don't get the "50% reduction in failures"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm already moderating this thread so I can't post except as AC, but I went to MIT.

In my living group we had 18 freshman my year. 1 graduated early, 6 of us graduated "on time," a few more graduated in 5 years and the rest never graduated.

So sorry, at least in my small sample, MIT does work that way.

Re:I don't get the "50% reduction in failures"

[Bozdune]

I went to MIT, and it sounds like your "living group" was too busy "drinking." No such stats in my class.

Re:I don't get the "50% reduction in failures"

[exploder]

Most people who think they can teach themselves a subject, even to the level of a four-year degree, are overestimating their own initiative and discipline. You may be the rare exception, but if so, the system isn't designed for you anyway.

You don't pay for a cozy environment. You pay the university to certify that you really *did* learn the material to their standards. You pay for access to experts in the field. You pay for use of facilities. All things you can't get on your own, even if you can learn everything independently.

Re:I don't get the "50% reduction in failures"

[Anonymous Coward]

I have taught at a MAJOR university of the MIT class and at a couple of state universities. When you have an MIT with its extremely high admission standards, weeding out extremely capable students is not necessary, although you may have a "project" in getting some of them adjusted to the pace of the real world. A lot of them played with science, doing what they wanted, prior to admission but in the real world you have to do things in a more focused and directed way (unless you are a professor, ahem). Many don't take to disciplined thinking and working, and are weeded out.

In a state university which has to admit anyone with a high enough class rank from high school, if you want a respectable degree for your graduates, you are bloody ruthless in weeding out your unworthy freshmen. That's life. I have not noticed in the two state universities I have worked in anything like "eliminating the worthy" taking place. I teach in the hard sciences, and if you are going to be worth a damn to an employer (for instance), you have to be able to take the pace of meeting large demands on your time and brainpower. At commuter schools, you have the problem of people working -- in one I am familiar with, over 70% of the students work over 30 hours a week, and it is hard for the faculty there to work students hard enough (i.e., homework) without putting the students on an 8 year plan to graduate.

What you are seeing here with the MIT changes is an adaptation to a lot of research going on in the teaching of physics (one area I know a bit about). There are ways to re-organizing your teaching methods, and the clickers play a very large role in this if used correctly, and with properly set up support by TA's students show a 30+% improvement in standard (conceptual) test scores versus standard teaching methods. The debate is over teaching problem solving skills which can only be trivially tested on 1 hour standardized tests. Better understanding of the class overall of concepts does not mean you have helped the small percentage of real problem solvers which will be in any class in any school, the MIT's included.

So, there is clear evidence that the modern teaching methods, used correctly, provide much more competent C students, it does not necessarily mean the two or three percent of students who are the real future of your field are getting anything more out of it. The improvement in conceptual understanding of the better students is much less dramatic, and may not even be measurable in the few you want to really get to. And, you have made a choice to not emphasize problem solving in order to increase the average conceptual understanding. Those of you out in the real world will understand that solving real problems is ultimately where it is at, not scoring well on standardized tests.

Re:I don't get the "50% reduction in failures"

[Animats]

MIT can do that to people. Burnout is a real risk there. But MIT's 6-year graduation rate for undergraduates is 94%. Most students do make it eventually. By comparison, Ohio State is at 68%. The University of California at Santa Barbara (America's best college for sex) is at 65%.

(I didn't go to MIT. Went to Stanford.)

Re:The best educations often don't come fro the bi

[reddburn]

If one happens to be a self-directed learner, then the research U's ARE the place to be, with far better resources available to students. I went to a SLAC as an undergraduate, then to Giant Research University for grad school, and I can promise you that I'd have given anything to have the resources of GRU as an undergrad.

Good.

[SatanicPuppy]

Massive lecture halls were completely pointless in my experience. The only correlation between attendance and my grade was actually a negative correlation: the less I went, the better my grades got.

I had one class, a planetary geology course, where I was told in the first class that there was no way I could pass without attending class (to watch his boring-ass slideshows, which were going to be on the exam). That was the last class I went to, and I aced the class and the final.

Likewise physics, and all the gut CS classes (everything up to the 300 level). If you have a question, you're fucked anyway, because with 200+ students, you'll never be able to ask it...Half the time they put you off to the end of the lecture anyway, and then they tell you to ask the TA during the practicum or the lab.

After I graduated I heard that they'd put in this system where you had to "rent" this fricking remote control, register it (unique serial number, so they could track you attendance) and use it to input multiple choice answers to questions the prof put on the board. I can only imagine the benefits felt by the students [/sarcasm]

Save your time for the practicum, keep on top of the syllabus, and let the prof drone on at 8:00am while you get an extra hour of shuteye.

Hey MIT Applicants

[mfh]

This means your chance of getting into MIT just decreased by over 9000%.

Re:The best educations often don't come fro the bi

[SatanicPuppy]

Yes and no. If you're looking for a lot of individual time and supervision, no, a big school is not the place to go.

But if you're looking for great resources and opportunities, then a big school is far superiour. I jumped into a graduate research lab my junior year for credit, experience, and references that were a huge benefit to me, and that sort of opportunity was impossible for me at the smaller school where I'd spent my first two years.

The gotcha is that you have to go looking for those opportunities. No one is going to try and force you to take them.

sink or swim

[Kartoffel]

I had a couple monster lecture hall classes as an undergrad. They were usually either introductory courses or weed-out courses. TFA is right that by the end of the semester addentance is cut in half. Students either don't need to attend anymore (introductory course) or they have already dropped it (in the case of a weed-out course).

Big U's are THE place to be for grad students and researchers. If you can manage to keep your head above water as an undergrad you will be better acclimated.

Horrible Idea

[jglov]

Where will students go to take their afternoon naps now?

Slightly off topic, perhaps...

[Toonol]

...but this just happened. I got a phone call this morning from my son, who is a Freshman just beginning his second term in college (math/physics major).

His college requires all freshman to take three credits of social/cultural liberals arts classes focused on diversity, understanding, and rainbows. On the plus side, they focus on writing weekly research papers, which is probably a good habit for freshman to pick up.

In this specific class, the teacher was warning against the perfidious institution of sexism in places of power, and gave the evil ex-dean of harvard as an example. I happen to have had conversations about that with my son, and so when the teacher asked for open discussion, my son spoke up. He said that as he understood it, the Harvard dean was a poor example of sexism, since all he stated was that there was possibly may be some physical difference in brain development between the genders that lead to the male preponderance in hard sciences.

The teacher turned red, started to stammer, so my son stopped talking. By the end of the day, he had been notified that he had been removed from the class. Now, he's probably learned a good lesson... shut up and don't engage in free discussion in a class that encourages free discussion, until he gets a feel for the teacher's maturity. It's an unfortunate lesson, but probably necessary. I should stress that he is always polite, and always soft-spoken; there would have been nothing objectionable about his behavior.

To bring this back to topic, perhaps losing face-to-face contact and easy interactivity with the professor and other students is not really much of a loss. Except for the best teachers, most classes are no more educational than spending an hour with a textbook, and sometimes (when personalities get involved) much worse.

Re:Slightly off topic, perhaps...

[Colonel Korn]

Remember that you learned this preposterous story from your son, who learned his concept of reality with you. Your acceptance of this obviously falsified or wildly embellished story as reality shows that your understanding of reality is deeply flawed. This, in turn, implies that your son's understanding of reality is similarly flawed. By the time the story gets to us through you two highly imperfect filters, it's pretty much meaningless.

Re:Slightly off topic, perhaps...

[timholman]

The teacher turned red, started to stammer, so my son stopped talking. By the end of the day, he had been notified that he had been removed from the class.

I've been teaching at public and private universities for many years, and I have yet to see or hear of a undergraduate class where a professor could arbitrarily drop a student from that class without that student's permission, just because the student said something politically incorrect.

So tell me, what university was this? And what reason did your son claim was given for this supposed drop? And why didn't he raise holy hell with the administration for such a flagrant and prejudicial abuse of faculty power, assuming such power even exists?

I call shennanigans. I suggest you contact the dean's office and find out the real reason your son dropped the class.

Re:Slightly off topic, perhaps...

[exploder]

Yup. No way the OP's son got removed from a class for that. I've seen plenty of *actual* misbehavior from dumbass freshmen that never led to their removal from class.

This sounds like the kind of "look what the libruls are doing *now*" sort of email that circulates among my Christian/conservative acquaintances.

Re:Slightly off topic, perhaps...

[timholman]

This sounds like the kind of "look what the libruls are doing *now*" sort of email that circulates among my Christian/conservative acquaintances.

Exactly. In particular, note this part:

The teacher turned red, started to stammer, so my son stopped talking.

In other words, the wise conservative student outwits the mush-brained liberal professor and humiliates him in front of everyone, just by stating the facts! In reality, of course, the professor would just steamroller over any argument or fact thrown at him, and keep right on going. Anyone who has met the type knows exactly what I mean.

This sounds like something right out of Snopes. I'll bet I could find a variant of this exact story if I looked hard enough.

Synonymous?

[TomRK1089]

"...the massive lecture hall synonymous with achieving a bachelors of science."

Synonymous? Maybe at large colleges, but guess what -- you can get a degree without that experience. It's called a smaller school. Sadly, many of my high school compatriots looked at "name brand" first, and size or cost second, if at all. For any high school slashdotters listening, I have a secret -- it's the same degree. My father went to state school in RI, and was recruited by Raytheon before he'd even graduated. He was working alongside graduates from all the Ivy Leagues, getting paid the same. It doesn't matter what the name on the diploma is, what matters is the effort you put in and the skills you provide for your employer. Save your money, avoid crippling student loan debt, and get those smaller class sizes anyways.

Smaller university equals smaller classes. The largest class I've ever had at my university was 40 students -- hardly unmanageable. Consider these things first, since you're going to school for your degree, not bragging rights, at least ostensibly so.

Failing or burning out?

[Auraiken]

A bit on that note is that the kids who are going to MIT might usually be very intelligent and might have high grades but what may happen is that they start to burn out around this time or go through some sort of identity crisis where they want to party and relax. So this might be a big factor as well. I mean how many of you want to learn things all the time no matter how cool they can be? I know I've gotten sick of even the things that I was interested in if it was a common routine.

Re:It saves money

[KovaaK]

Clearly, there is a balance of cost and effectiveness. You can't have infinite students to one professor because very few students would get anything meaningful out of it.

What Firethorn is arguing is that one of the major benefits of having smaller classes is the individual student-professor interactions that occur such as the ones he listed. I tend to agree with him. When a professor can hear a student's (incorrect) thought process on a problem, he may have heard similar issues before and be quick to correct them. There are plenty of incorrect ways to look at problems, but it wouldn't make sense for a professor to approach a class of 300+ and say "Don't do these problems this way - this is wrong. Also, don't do them this way. This way is wrong too."

Re:Souds boring

[afidel]

Um, there are PLENTY of hot chicks at MIT, having brains does not make you unattractive and MIT is the elite of the elite so they can be selective for well rounded very smart people. Don't get me wrong there are plenty of basement dwelling nerds there, but from my campus visits and all of the tv shows I have seen they aren't even the majority. Think head chearleder who was in all honors/AP classes with a near 4.0 while also being an officer of 6-8 other clubs/groups, that's the people that get into MIT.

Re:Souds boring

[mikeee]

On the other hand, MIT has excellent shooting and fencing teams. We'll just see whose athletic program is superior when the zombie horde overruns Cambridge!

Re:Souds boring

[demonbug]

On the other hand, MIT has excellent shooting and fencing teams. We'll just see whose athletic program is superior when the zombie horde overruns Cambridge!

What, is Harvard back in session?