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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.'"
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.