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Should Professors Be Required To Teach With Tech?
An anonymous reader writes "Are professors who don't update their teaching methods like doctors who fail to keep up with the latest ways to treat disease? Or are professors better off teaching old-school? From the article: 'It is tough to measure how many professors teach with technology or try other techniques the report recommends, such as group activities and hands-on exercises. (Technology isn't the only way to improve teaching, of course, and some argue that it can hinder it.) Though most colleges can point to several cutting-edge teaching experiments on their campuses, a recent national assessment called the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement suggests that old-school instruction remains the norm. Only 13 percent of the professors surveyed said they used blogs in teaching; 12 percent had tried videoconferencing; and 13 percent gave interactive quizzes using 'clickers,' or TV-remotelike devices that let students respond and get feedback instantaneously. The one technology that most teachers use regularly — course-management systems — focuses mostly on housekeeping tasks like handing out assignments or keeping track of student grades.'"
Yes. Not because it's inherently better (it's not), but because it's what students can expect to be exposed to for the rest of their lives/careers. So they might as well become used to it.
Teachers should not be required to teach tech. The only areas I can see where tech would help things are in engineering or science classes. But even in a science class, you are just using a computer as a data-logger, that's it. Math shouldn't be using tech, as the students should be learning how to do the math without the tech. Computers only help out in crazy high level classes where you have to start doing things like matrix manipulations, etc. Do I care that my teacher does or doesn't have a blog? No, that's silly. If they want to post office hours on a website, fine, go right ahead. Video-conferencing? Practically worthless in the teaching environment.
There is no sense in demanding "tech" to be included for what ever reason! Just because "tech" is used does not make a lecture better.
Teaching is fundamentally a human activity. The best way to ensure quality teaching is to hire good teachers. A crappy teacher who keeps a class blog or uses videoconferencing is still a crappy teacher. A good teacher who stands in front of the class and engages the students using nothing more than chalk and a blackboard is still a good teacher.
Technology is all but irrelevant here, but it's trendy to propose it as a way to improve education because it skirts the real issue of hiring excellent teachers, and allows administrators to throw money at the problem in the form of tech budgets.
...really sucks. I'd like to see more schools adopt testing methods that allow students to write code during exams the way that code is meant to be written - with a computer!
I wouldn't want to take a math (or programming, for that matter) class that didn't have a big whiteboard in the room. Nothing beats the interactivity of a teacher with chalk in his hand.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Requiring Professors to teach by certain techniques is certainly going to lead to disaster. While in surgery, newer procedures are almost always a measurable improvement over previous procedures in some way (time, cost, success rate, whatever), I feel it that its simply too difficult to quantify the 'success' of various techniques. Especially when the success depends so much on the course material, professors, and the students. For example, I could hardly imagine Calculus I being improved with video conferencing or blogs.
What benefit would forcing professors to teach integration with powerpoints bring? If anything, I believe there are entire concepts which are better taught on a chalkboard, not with powerpoints or slides. Things where the process matters (like integration, or physics problems) where simply seeing the steps laid out before you seems to miss out on some of the 'magic'. I really feel this because I've just completed a term where I had a calc prof teaching all on chalkboard, and a physics prof who had most of the material laid out in powerpoint, and would fall back to the board when asked a question, or having to elaborate.
There is nothing wrong with encouraging profs to try something new. Provide them with resources and information on new ways to teach. Don't force them. You'll likely just end up with a bunch of profs pissed off at the university admin, and classfuls of bored students.
That said, I do find the use of the clickers really useful. I do wish more courses/profs used them.
The "doctors" analogy seems dangerously weak. In theory, when a new drug/surgery/device comes out, it has undergone an FDA approval process, which includes a bunch of safety and efficacy testing. The process is imperfect, and can be marred by relatively small sample sizes, or shenanigans on the part of companies who really want to sell new, shiny, patented stuff, rather than generic old stuff; but it theoretically provides a degree of assurance that newer offers at least some improvements, at least in some situations. Therefore, a doctor who isn't aware of the new stuff is pretty clearly inferior to one who is.
Educational technology, on the other hand, is required to undergo precisely no testing of any kind(aside from basic electrical safety and not catching fire type stuff), and frequently receives very little. The vendor is always terribly enthusiastic, of course, and there may or may not be a study or two of dubious quality; but the adoption is driven much more by optimism and hype than by data. Since there is pitifully little testing, the idea that newer=better is largely nonsense.
As TFA notes, certain technologies that are more or less unequivocally superior have been widely adopted by all but the most fossilized. CMSs beat the hell out of distributing photocopies and shuffling paper. They have largely replaced the distribution of photocopied stuff, with the common exception of the near-ceremonial "handing out of the syllabus on the first day". Similarly, computers are largely superior to typewriters for working with text, and both are more legible by far than handwriting, so most documents are now written on a computer(though, for markup/editing/grading, handwriting is still competitive).
If you are going to "require" something, you had better have good reason to believe that it is the better way to go.
Professors should teach with whatever medium they feel most comfortable with. As a student, I am there to learn the concepts and ideas they are providing. Anything that gets in the way of that transfer of knowledge is a bad thing.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Are students who fail to learn via old school methods only in school because the tech helped them get there? Are they only capableof learning one way? Sounds like they deserve to fail?
I use AdobeConnect, instant messenger, a blog, CITRIX, a variety of open source tools, and a bunch more but I am a technology professor. I don't use powerpoints with bullets (presentation zen?) and I hate snore fest lectures more than my students.
Telling professors to use tech is like telling a mechanic to use a crescent wrench. What is the context of the learning environment and what are the learning outcomes? I tailor my educational strategy to the educational outcomes. Critical thinking skills, don't need flashy graphics if linear processes are the desired result.
Heck. I'd be happy if my students simply read the text book, and additional reading. When I assign a reading on the web half the time I get complaints that I didn't print it and pass it out in class. Some of my students say 100 pages of reading a week is to much homework. These are the same students bragging before class that they spend 50-60 hours a week play the latest MMORPG.
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The summary asks two separate questions and then somehow magically links them together as if both questions can only ever by answered by the same answer.
Q1: Should professors use technology to teach?
Q2: Should professors stay up to date with teaching methodology.
Teaching methodology != technology. It may do in some cases, but it won't in most.
p.s. AFAIC, A1=No, A2=Yes.
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This is the dumbest thing I've seen lately. Figures it's from education activists. I didn't think they could screw things any more than they have but apparently they're still at it.
Blogging? Taking tests with clickers? These people are pathetic. Please don't tell me we're paying for these a$$hats.
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As a faculty member who has been involved with web-based coursework, online lectures, and the integration of laptops in the classroom, I am less than impressed with most technology-based pedagogical "innovations".
It's not that teachers are typically anti-technology (although some certainly are), but instead that most teachers realize that adding technology does not necessarily improve the teaching experience, and in many cases can even be a distraction. There's a reason why the Socratic method of the lecturer standing in front of a classroom full of students has persisted so long - it works. It is very hard to beat the teaching effectiveness of a good instructor who can expand on concepts and formulate new examples on the fly, based on the questions asked during a lecture. Furthermore, technology cannot make bad teachers into good teachers, no matter how much money you throw at the problem. The man or woman in front of the class makes all the difference. Most tech-based classroom techniques are generally introduced with great fanfare, but generally fall by the wayside within a few years as everyone realize that they are more trouble than they're worth, i.e. too much time and money involved with no measureable improvement in student comprehension of the subject.
Most faculty are happy enough to use the web to distribute material to the class, or to post grades, but beyond that point you hit diminishing returns very quickly. I don't even try to post my class notes online, because I learned long ago that most students tend not to grasp the material unless you force them to create their own class notes. Beyond the current use of the web to distribute course materials, there are two pieces of technology that I would personally welcome to the classroom:
(1) A pen-based tablet with the ease of use of the Apple UI, for taking class notes. I'm not talking about the Windows / Wacom / OneNote tablets which still haven't gotten it right after years of attempts, but an entirely new concept that is more akin to the iPad experience.
(2) A augmented / virtual reality technology that would enable students to remotely "attend" a class with the same 360-degree audio-visual experience as physically being in the room. That's still a few years in the future, but I think it could make a big impact to education, as it would enormously multiply the effectiveness of good lecturers.
Given: "technology" is possibly necessary for good instruction.
Given: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Conclusion: The authors want magical professors.
It is inherently better. If you're spending half the lecture writing something on the board that could very well be flashed up there in an instant using PowerPoint or similar, you're wasting the students time.
Well, to optimise it further, he just could give you the title and the page of the text book and save everyone to make and display power point slides. Unfortunately, most students are too lazy or too stupid to learn on their own and need someone to do the song and the dance going with the lesson. In the end, it doesn't really matter of the dance is writing on a chalk board or putting everyone to sleep with power point slides, the technology used has nothing to do with the learning success.
I would go so far to say, that someone who can't teach without technology gimmicks is a bad teacher. All the best teachers I met, didn't need it, although some of them liked to used it.
Higher tech for the sake of higher tech is the worst thing you can do with technology. It's a scam. Examples:
(1) My home state of Maine gives every kid in school in the state a laptop. It's a scam so someone can say "look, we're hi tech". Teachers waste time on discipline problems, tech breakdown, being forced unnecessarily into using tech-driven instruction so as to not waste the laptops. I'm told that every day there has to be a UPS delivery to every school in the state from Apple with replacement laptops.
(2) Dean at prior college (non-union-strong) had a meeting where he demanded instructors use overhead projectors because of the expense of installing them, so we could show off how high-tech we are. If I put it up to a student vote ("Do you like PowerPoint instruction, or not?" -- "Do you like group projects, or not?") they usually decline. Scam.
Unfortunately, higher education is plagued by the need of education experts/PHDs to make careers/publication by "some new thing", anything whatsoever. That's why you get ridiculous churn in methods, teaching styles, group work, hands-on, technology, etc., etc. And it works hand-in-hand with book publishers who use the same as a reason to churn new book editions every so years, so that old editions can't be re-used.
Here's a completely crazy idea -- base decisions like these on research as to whether it helps students (and not on just whether it makes some salesman/budget-administrator cream in their pants). Does such research exist? Consider this article in the last issue of the AFT's American Educator:
Can research provide any guidelines as to which classroom applications are most effective?... The studies on these point to two conclusions. First, the mere presence of technology in the classroom does not necessarily mean that students learn more. Second -- and, perhaps, a corollary of the first conclusion -- using these technologies effectively is not as obvious as it might seem at first. [American Educator, Summer 2010, Daniel T. Willingham, "Ask the Cognitive Scientist: Have Technology and Multitasking Rewired How Students Learn?", p. 26]
http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/summer2010/Willingham.pdf
In short: The "hi-tech uber alles" fetish is, mostly, another in a long series of time & money-wasting scams perpetrated on the education system. There's little or no evidence that it helps student learning, and there is evidence that the time required to manage/prepare/leverage technology resources is directly lost from the educator's other existing duties of teaching, assessment, and feedback.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
You know, if I am going to have one of my lectures videorecorded so that the University can use and re-use it again then they'd better improve my compensation packet. As of now, I do not grant them the right to re-distribute things indiscriminately. It is sort of the re-negotiation of contracts for actors after VHS/DVD/BD came along... Each new medium for the producers to make extra $$ then the people who actually work in making the product should get extra $$ too.
Another thing I don't want to hear from a doctor is: "Oh, there is a proven and very reliable cure for it, but it's quite old and using it would not be modern enough, therefore I'll give you that more modern treatment, which has only a fifty-fifty success rate, but it's all modern."
I don't want the newest cure, I want the best cure. I don't care if the best cure was found thousands of years ago by the old Greek, or last year by a top researcher.
And likewise, I don't want to be taught the newest way, but the best way. If the best way to teach a certain subject is to use the blackboard, then for god's sake, use it!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
And because it's what students want and students are paying for the service. We should stop letting schools and teachers get away with bad customer service. It's just bullshit that they shouldn't have to provide good service to their students because students should respect their elders/educators.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Yes. Not because it's inherently better (it's not), but because it's what students can expect to be exposed to for the rest of their lives/careers. So they might as well become used to it.
I disagree. The first duty - possibly the only duty - of a teacher should be to teach their subject in the best way possible. Just because people believe it is much better/easier to use some tech media doesn't mean that it is. Take Powerpoint presentations, for example: most people think this is an effective way of communicating, but studies have shown that in fact, the speech and what goes on on the slides disturb each other, so the audience actually get less out of it. Add to that, of course, the effect of a bad set of slides and a speaker who can't present, and you have something in an altogether different league of horror.
And apart from that, teaching is not just about presenting a subject to a class, it is also about meeting the students where they are, mentally, as individuals - all these cool blogs and what have you are not adequate for that; it is too much of a one size fits all. Some students have brilliant ideas, but are afraid of looking stupid, so they need to be enticed out of hiding; others are not nearly as clever as they like to think and probably need to be slowed own a bit with a sledge hammer to their foreheads. "Cool tech" just isn't up to the challenge, and a teacher can all too easily waste lots of time trying to (badly) master all the coolness.