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.'"

Comments

No.

[Manip]

No. There has been tons of research in this area and none has been very positive to technology.

On a much more personal and anecdotal note, I have taken classes at a "modern" college that did everything using IT (*in an IT course no less) and I've also taken courses where they used a black/white board, and I learned much more in the latter. Further, I believe that a teacher who has a poor grasp of the technology they're using just should skip it - nothing worse than some idiot putting 100% of their course material into PowerPoint and assuming that is enough.

Re:No.

[supercrisp]

My wife does research in instructional technology, and I am, as you might guess (since I'm on /.), a nerd. We both keep up on the research on the value of "tech" in teaching, and the results seem to suggest that technology is not so helpful in the classroom. Maybe this is because it's still often a distraction because teachers don't know how to use it well or because it's often still quite clunky to use. That said, one thing is certain: all the students (and people on slashdot) who say they can multitask with technology are very likely wrong when it comes to any task that requires recall or concentrated thought.

I am an advocate of using technology in the classroom when it is appropriate. I think many popular uses are not appropriate. Clickers are of dubious value. Online tech often encourages bad forms of testing, but it's very useful for unevaluated, "low-threat" fluency-building writing--BUT the pressure is always on, from students AND administrators to offer grades for all work. Admins need to demonstrate teaching's impact, while students don't want to work that doesn't have "count."

Tech is useful when it's very careful integrated into a lesson plan and sparingly used. But the main focus these days is on using tech to increase the ratio of students to teachers and/or classrooms. And a lot of the people who want to use or advocate for tech either are a) somewhat over-enthusiastic people who want to use computers for everything, including dessert topping and floor wax, or b) older people who are doing it for appearances. You end up with a lot of people using class time to teach the technology instead of the subject, or (worse) older people thinking it's cool and useful to convert all their old lesson plans to PowerPoint slide with snazzy transitions (they then spend 15 minutes of each class trying to plug the video cable into the Ethernet port).

Finally, and here's the kicker for me: tech is costly, either to students or to the institution. If we're going to spend money, it would be better spend on teachers because we no without any doubt that students benefit from greater direct access to faculty. But that's so old-fashioned, and you can't say cyber this and 2.0 that on the fundraising brochures if you're just hiring faculty.

Note: Why do I initially write "tech"? Because we always mean electronics. The chalkboard and whiteboard are tech, and they're often under-utilized or poorly utilized by teachers. (I realize I'm sort of blowing my ethos because I'm too lazy to get real paragraph breaks. But it's Sunday, and I'm feeling entitled.)

One more thing, seriously, administrators, 1995 is calling; it wants "cyber" back.

Been working in instructional tech for 15 years

[edremy]

and my answer is hell no. Use what improves your teaching, not what you think you "have" to use. When I teach, I use a blackboard for most everything- it's simple, it always works and it doesn't get in my way. I'll use a computer in class when it's actually useful, for things like

• 3-d models of molecules
• Graphical simulations
• Photos and movies

But simply moving your stack of notes to Powerpoint is beyond worthless- it wastes your time and adds nothing at all to the content of the course. Outside the classroom stuff like blogs and videoconferencing can be amazingly useful if you want to correspond with people around the world, but there's really not many good reasons to use stuff like discussion forums when you have a class of 10 people- why not just discuss face to face? We're spending a ton of time moving to a new course management system this year, but it's a plumbing application now- it makes doing routine chores easier and helps with distributing reserves and such, but there are very few serious pedagogy changes when using them. (We have a few exceptions, but 75% of the use is reserves, handouts and collecting papers)

Look at things that can improve the way you teach, to do something you *can't* do without tech. Don't just assume it's great because it looks shiny

A few observations from a real teacher

[ezratrumpet]

I've taught PK through college undergraduate, in nearly every discipline.

1. Societal advances in technology have been largely an effort at efficiency.

2. Educational applications in technology are rarely about increasing efficiency in student learning, but are occasionally about increasing efficiency in materials management for the teacher. Think electronic gradebooks: the reason they are nearly ubiquitous has nothing to do with administrative mandate, but with making things easier for the teacher. It's nothing for the computer to average grades? Weighting by assignment or category? No problem. Doing this with a calculator is a much more complicated proposition.

Electronic whiteboards are catching on for preserving lecture notes, but the real revolution here has passed - it was the change from overhead projector to video projector, especially if accompanied by a document camera. I use my projector ALL THE TIME for lecture notes, video, audio, still pictures - and when I have something to show I haven't captured digitally, I use the document camera.

The web-based communication tools allow me to post assignments and lesson plans online for involved parents and absent students. Video would help this, I suppose, but my classroom thrives on interaction - being a spectator to my lectures without being able to ask questions isn't the riveting experience I wish it would be.

Email allows an asynchronous communication between all of us, as do message board style discussions. These can have value among inquisitive students.

Here's the point, though: really inquisitive students are already doing inquisitive things that eclipse their peers' knowledge without huge effort. Extraordinary students drive their own learning. If I help a student become excited about a subject, and perhaps provide some resources & guidance for their own learning and research, then I've made the most important contribution. After that, it's a different sort of guidance than the "you need to know this so you won't be stupid" sort of instruction.

Ben Carson, head of pediatric neurology at John Hopkins, wrote about figuring out that he learned best by reading, and once he did this, he stopped going to class except for tests and labs. Instead, he read books. He read the assigned material, then read the source material for the assigned material, and then probably read more on top of that.

He redefined the whole field because he knew his strengths as a learner.

Anything technology can do to help a teacher advance that sort of self-knowledge is helpful, possibly important, and maybe even essential.

But if we can't state clearly how a technology will help advance student learning (or even improve teacher efficiency), we have no business expecting teachers to use that technology in their work.

TL;dr: use the best tool for the Learning, not the best tool available.

Re:Writing code with pencil and paper...

[shrimppesto]

Several years ago, when I was taking an intro CS course at Stanford (106X), our exams were on paper and we had to code our responses by hand. There would be a problem to solve at the top of an otherwise blank page, and the rest of the page was where you could "code." Certain caveats were allowed (no declaring variables, etc.), but apart from that it had to be functional code. The point was to test your understanding of the elementary concepts, and how to implement them in a non-hackish manner. It was hard, but it was also a great mental exercise in design. To be fair, I think we could have done something similar by computer (take away the compiler, or something). I have no idea what they are using now.

From time to time, I still pseudo-code on paper. Helps to sort out an overall approach to a problem.

"Clickers"

[Carik]

My university started using them 7 or 8 years ago. They're the biggest boon ever to students who want to skip class.

You just bribe a classmate to bring it with and answer quiz questions for you, and you get all the credit and the teacher thinks you were there. I saw people running four or five clickers in a single class period.