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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.
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.
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?
If not, and if it doesn't make the teachers' lives any easier, what's the point?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Whether technology can be useful depends entirely on the course and what it's trying to teach. I've taken courses that were taught very well with Powerpoint. Yet those same courses could be taught as well using traditional means. Some courses would really suck with Powerpoint, while yet others could benefit.
Wikis? Blogs? Again: Maybe. Depends on the course.
One thing I always hate about these discussions is the issue of students getting bored/falling asleep is always brought up. There are two sides to the coin: Yes, the professor should make all attempts to make the class interesting. And yes, the student should be flexible enough to learn from different styles. If he/she is falling asleep, it's not a given that the professor is to blame: Education is not a spectator sport.
More importantly, whether they fall asleep or not has virtually nothing to do with technology.
Finally: The article fails to mention the most important point: In today's (US) universities, professors have no incentive to become better educators, and are more interested in getting their next grant.
Beetle B.
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.
--- Location Unknown
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.
rd
Given: "technology" is possibly necessary for good instruction.
Given: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Conclusion: The authors want magical professors.
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
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
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.
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.
Note: if your teacher is using chalk in a room equipped with a large whiteboard, it may be a good time to double check their technological competence.
Conflict of Interest.
While I normally would begin this discussion by putting forth a rather common sense argument (simply put: a good teacher is not good because technology makes him good, but rather because he makes technology work for him), I believe that the discussion is a moot point. Here's why:
The director of the Office of Educational Technology (the agency that published the previously cited report) is Karen Cator. Just read her bio there, and you'll discover that she worked for Apple computer for a decade. Conflict of Interest. The recommendations put forth in this report are invalid, because the director's previous employer stands to gain billions in revenue if the recommendations in this report are implemented nationwide. And what does this director stand to gain by steering billions of taxpayer dollars into the hands of Apple?
You forgot Twitter. You can't have a proper classroom without Twitter!
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
The Socratic method does not involve a lecturer, much less a lecturer standing in front of a classroom full students. Rather, the Socratic method consists of a discussion leader asking leading questions of a small group in order to get them to realize that they already have the answers bouncing around in their head.
If more professors used the Socratic method, I doubt that there would be as much emphasis on some of the more misguided trends in "interactive" education: group projects, small group discussions, web forums, etc. Much of the time (but certainly not all of the time), these props are a reaction to the perceived impersonality of the lecturer standing at the head of the classroom method that has dominated academia in the Anglo-phonic world through most of modern history.
The problem, though, is that the Socratic method doesn't scale well. You can cram 1000 students into the lecture hall if its large enough and they'll all be able to hear the lecture about equally as well. But you can't use the Socratic method very well on a group of more than about 10.
I don't know where you studied, but I studied basic matrix operations like calculating determinants and inverting matrices in high school in Brazil. More advanced operations, like calculating eigenvalues and eigenvectors, came in my first year in college.
In our modern life technology is very important for learning any subject. Even in social studies you can benefit from tools like search engines. Blogs and discussion groups help you communicate ideas. You cannot have a face to face discussion with someone from the other side of the world, but technology will enrich your life by allowing you to meet different ideas and concepts.
When I come to think of it, there's only one group that wouldn't benefit from the facilities in communications that our modern technology brings us: the religious fanatics.
At the risk of commenting too much, I'm also a voracious reader and have used the Nook, Kindle, and Stanza apps on my iPad since I bought it.
There is huge advantage to ease of use. I can carry an entire library in that little slice of tech. Turning pages is a twitch of a finger, highlighting at least as easy as the paper version, and notetaking has potential (once I use a wireless keyboard and can get a copy of my notes as a single document, preferably with my highlighted passages included).
Even when I take notes by hand, it's much easier to stop tapping the screen, pick up a pen, and write than to get something to hold the book open or hold it open while I write.
We really haven't begun to recast the book as a text/video/interactive medium, but that time will come - we'll have embedded videos, connections to the bulletin board, and probably even connection to other resources and the author, all from the "book page."
The danger, of course, is that I also have some cool games and a web browser on my iPad.
TL; dr: only Apple could combine the White Magic of Endless Learning with the Dark Magic of Eternal Distraction.
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.
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
When I went to college lectures, more often than not, the lecturer spent up to a quarter of an hour of the beginning of the lecture trying to hook up his laptop to the auditorium's projector system and getting the PA system to work properly.
And these were classes in Computer Science, mind you ...
So no, tech can even be a hindrance to education.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
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.
I teach at the university level, and would suffer sanctions or at least be spoken to if I just used:
- Blogs
- Websites
- Online tools
In class willy-nilly. I can't even create a discussion forum for us somewhere or email the students directly using their preferred email address (instead, I am stuck using school addresses that many rarely check). Instead, I am usually bound to a pre-determined, certified list of internal tools of which the most infernal is Blackboard, which seems to be the "technology tool" of choice at every campus at which I've taught. Too bad because its user interface is so absolutely poor that students who spend their days entirely online still can't figure it out; its compatibility is so bad that trying to use it in a course is a sure way to spend at least half of a class if not an entire class talking about required browsers and how to install them; and its stability is so bad that you'd better not rely on it for evaluated exercises, because half the students will say "it was down, I couldn't do the assignment" and a quick exchange with IT will reveal this to have been the case.
From the other technology tools that seem to make their way onto campuses, the electronic blackboard/whiteboard tools are cute but are so expensive that they tend to be locked away / disabled and require that you file in advance for access on the days that you're "planning" to use them, necessitating a visit from an IT tech before and after class. And predictably, half the time when they get there with the key and switch you on, you find out that the system is damaged in some way and doesn't actually operate, but nobody has reported it or performed maintenance / swap-outs in that room for ages and despite your need and reporting, their ETA for repair, once scheduled is sometime after the semester is over.
The one university I taught at as an adjunct that issued new ThinkPads to its students and had campus WiFi also locked them down completely with just IE and Office and not even Flash, meaning that many online applications and tools of various kinds couldn't be used.
Basically, I could just bring MY laptop and students could just bring THEIR laptop and we could use the WiFi and OUR OWN accounts and whatever software we wished, my classrooms would be FAR more technologically enabled. With all of the requirements, it becomes far more practical and easy to simply do a better job doing what good instructors have always done: stand at the front of the classroom, talk a lot and ask a lot of Socratic questions, and write on the blackboard with chalk or on the whiteboard with a marker. That, at least, tends to be accessible everywhere and very fail-safe.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Note: if your teacher is using chalk in a room equipped with a large whiteboard, it may be a good time to double check their technological competence.
Does technological competency (which in /. means "computer gadget competency") matter if the subject is statistics, calculus, physics, or even algorithm analysis or theory of automata?
Shit, even in Computer Science/Software Engineering, I wouldn't care if my professor hasn't programmed in, say, the latest JEE stack or what not. For subjects like distributed computing, algorithms, or networks, it really doesn't matter.
Gimme a good old' school professor with chalk dust all over his head any day of the week!
*Whoosh*
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.
PowerPoint leads to reducing complex issues to bulleted points and that is detrimental to the decision making and learning process.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html
http://www.afji.com/2009/07/4061641
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.