When Getting Rid of College Lectures Makes Sense

timothy writes "NPR reports that Harvard physicist and professor Eric Mazur has largely gotten rid of the lecture in his classes, after finding that in lecture-based classes, students tend to commit to memory formulae and heuristics, but fail to develop deep understanding of concepts. Mazur has tried — and seemingly succeeded — to cultivate deeper learning with a combination of small group peer-instruction and a tight feedback loop based on in-class polling about particular problems. Joe Redish also teaches physics, at the University of Maryland, and says, 'With modern technology, if all there is is lectures, we don't need faculty to do it. ... Get 'em to do it once, put it on the Web, and fire the faculty.'"

Comments

This is a wise idea

[Roachie]

We cant have students memorizing formulas and heuristics.

Re:This is a wise idea

[nwf]

We cant have students memorizing formulas and heuristics.

One way to do this, which is what my school did, was to test based on the theory. Teach the specifics and write the exam such that you are pretty much required to use the theory to solve the problems. It takes more work than the simple recite the formula tests that professors like since they don't have to think much to create them. We quickly weeded out the people who memorized things. Personally, I do much better learning the theory and applying it than memorization.

Re:This is a wise idea

[Synerg1y]

Also memorizing something doesn't mean you understand it, when people memorize things and draw conclusions from them that's different from just looking for a grade, but those people tend to be self-motivated to learn, thus the theory is better for them anyways, they'll learn the details themselves if interested. Also helps keep people who don't belong out of fields they wouldn't be happy in to begin with. Then again some people are just looking for a paycheck to feed their family, but still what about advancing society for future families?

Re:This is a wise idea

[Idbar]

I think this approach misses the point. Asking in context, every time a teacher teaches something it's going to be taught in a different way. Students will come up with different questions depending on the context.

I always paid careful attention to the classes and asked as much as I could. Some people think it's annoying, but I think that's the fundamental part on why the professors are there. Otherwise, everyone can just read a book or watch a video.

So my main concern about this is that we're focusing on what students, lazy professors and educational corporate interests think classes should be.

Re:This is a wise idea

[hedwards]

It is annoying, and the correct solution to that is basically to have more seminars as a core part of the class. It's something that we had when I was in college and IIRC they also do them at Harvard as well. The basic idea is that it's structured time during which you can discuss the subject matter and often times you get to use the information you've been studying to see sort of how it works.

Obviously that's inferior to actually using it in the real world, but it's significantly more useful than sitting through a lecture about it and provides for more opportunities to ask questions.

Re:This is a wise idea

[nwf]

I think that's one of the points of the article: memorization as a learning strategy is doomed to fail.

Just because one professor at a prestigious learning institution cannot teach in a way that fosters theoretical understanding doesn't mean we should throw out lectures. I found lectures helpful because I learn well in them, when backed up by other classwork.) I felt I had to be there regularly to learn. I suspect that many people who focus on memorization miss a lot of lectures. Plus, I don't think I'd like small groups. Sounds too new touchy-feely.

News at 11, not everyone learns the same. :)

Re:This is a wise idea

[rtb61]

The main point here is that lectures are less beneficial that peer study groups, many colleges call these groups normally led by post graduate students for undergraduate subjects tutorials. Well, duh, that why many colleges and universities have compulsory tutorial groups in the first place.

So why lectures, when tutorial groups are more beneficial, lets call it right wing economics even though it doesn't really work that well it is cheaper to have a skilled person lecture 50 or more students that have them sit with ten or less at a time in tutorial groups.

At the end of the day all lectures might as well be video that the student is assigned to watch, maybe with some on the spot automated quizzing to check for attention. All that tuition money is far better spent on providing more tutorials, hmm, which makes colleges as places where tutorials are held and learning resources provided very useful. So close the lecture theatres and provide more funding for more teachers and more tutorials in order to make learning far more effective.

Now who would have guessed that whether in primary, secondary or even tertiary the single most important factor for quality education is student teacher ration, best outcome ten or less. As you increase number you might as well be showing educational videos and hoping for the best but getting the worst (typical right wing thinking, if it's cheaper it's better fingers in the ear, easy closed, la la thinking).

Re:This is a wise idea

[portforward]

Um, I don't think you understood the reason why your professor did that. He wasn't just trying to keep you from using the "high school formula sheet", rather he was trying to help you to understand physics at a deeper level. There is a difference between algebra-based (or high school) physics and calculus based (or university) physics. The difference is subtle, but very significant. He was trying to present one of the applications of calculus, one of the great achievements of human thought.

Re:This is a wise idea

[DarthVain]

It was the main reason I got out of Physics. I liked the theroy, but could never remember the formulas for test time, which made it difficult.

Have to agree

[vawwyakr]

My Father In Law has been getting classes on DVD for a while and loves them. I have watched a few and I think they're just as useful as any lecture I ever had. What they should do is provide the video lectures along with class notes and assignments and meet to ask questions and give details. If the videos are done well (I think a live studio audience with a few plants that ask common questions might be a good idea just to make it feel organic) then it should ultimately cut way down on professor time in large lecture halls and give them more time to have individual or small group interactions. Plus videos can we watched again! Either for studying or maybe even recapping later on in life.

Re:Have to agree

[afidel]

and give them more time to have individual or small group interactions

Great except that last thing that many professors at a large number of research schools want to do is interact with underclassmen. Heck, most of them don't want to deal with masters students, if you're not a phd candidate or a postdoc then you're not worth their time. I know this is a broad generalization but talking to many of my friends that went to top tier schools or large public research universities this was a common problem, it's one of the reasons I selected a school where the top degree was a MS, the professors there actually wanted to teach =)

Re: Re:Have to agree

[rnturn]

"Heck, most of them don't want to deal with masters students, if you're not a phd candidate or a postdoc then you're not worth their time."

Heh, sometimes being a Ph.D. candidate isn't even good enough to get faculty attention. I knew of a doctoral candidate who had his dissertation sit on the corner of of a professor's desk for the better part of six months. (I know because that professor was the principle investigator on a research contract I was working on and I saw the dissertation sitting every time I came in for project meetings.) Each week I saw more and more paper piled on top of this poor guy's research. Hopefully that sort of inattention, abuse, whatever is not commonplace.

"... it's one of the reasons I selected a school where the top degree was a MS, the professors there actually wanted to teach."

Similar experience. I chose a smaller school with no advanced degree program because I'd actually be attending classes taught by the faculty I'd met. At the University where I saw that dissertation holding down the corner of the professor's desk, I knew of one faculty member that was sweating getting tenure because he'd made the mistake of taking his teaching seriously. Winning an award for distinguished teaching was very nearly the kiss of death for his career at that school.

I do agree that smaller classes are a great way to learn. I wonder how many of these faculty members that don't want to teach aren't the ones stuck with those classes held in auditoriums with dozens and dozens of students (or more). I can't imagine those "classroom" situations are conducive to learning. The largest classes I can remember taking were those infamous senior/first year grad student classes (they were known as 400/500 level classes when I was there). They were awful. It wasn't until I started taking the 600/700 level classes with maybe ten students that you felt like you were really learning. One of my favorite classes as an undergraduate was taught to about six students. At the beginning of the class, the professor made the comment "I decided to teach this class because I wanted to learn more about ..." (He was the department chairman so it's not like he didn't have anything else to do. He was thrilled with the chance to teach.) Since then, I can't imagine taking a class any other way.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[Anon-Admin]

Wait tell they figure out that they can get a guy in India to do the lecture on video for 1/2 the price. Then we will outsource the professors as well.

Both is needed

[Anonymous Coward]

The very first contact is most easily done by lectures, you simply gather more information than by group work within the same time. Memorize stuff is important. Actually when teaching maths to fellow students I often discovered that they even lacked the formulas and never came far enough to use understanding to calculate something by quantity. The author is true on one point although: To gather real understanding you need to get involved into problems and discussion. Thats why normally you get homework after lectures and are encouraged to sit together with friends to solve them. But without lectures I do not see people progressing fast enough into new topics.

Re:Both is needed

[Synerg1y]

They probably don't care too much about math, can't change somebody who doesn't want to. To me though, I'm a kinetic learner, lectures are a real bore. I've been out of hs a while now and guess what, I haven't used a calculus formula yet! (Maybe to impress the opposite sex once or twice :P). I knew I wouldn't care going into IT or w/e so I learned the formulas, but never the underlying stuff, I can get back into it pretty quick this way, I used the book and a worksheet though, the teacher was great for questions but it was sheer volume of doing hw that let me pass the AP test. W a computer on the other hand, I can explain the IO& mechanical functions that let your keyboard work, so to each his own.

Re:Both is needed

[Aardpig]

Wow! You impress your mom with calculus?

If they are correct...

[medv4380]

Then Kahn Academy will replace all the schools given enough time.

Re:If they are correct...

[hedwards]

Students won't, but employers will. Having a degree from a respected institution of higher learning is one way in which employers can screen applicants. Which is a shame because going to Harvard or Yale doesn't really mean much in the grand scheme of things.

Re:If they are correct...

[Questy]

The problem here is one of relegating your own hiring practices to the realm of the very employee you are trying to avoid. Let me explain... I helped a local University (the one I attended) install a pretty massive software package. I trained their entire team on how to use it, and how to bring in what they knew about UNIX scripting to make the thing even more powerful. Six months later, one of the basic admin gigs came open, and I applied for it. I was well qualified for the position, and my experience outweighed everyone else in the department. I was perfect for the job. The screener was the department head, who was a good friend of mine as well. He was painfully sorry he couldn't hire me because the University had a "college degrees only" policy for hiring, and would have no one in these positions that didn't have a degree. Best part: a girl with a degree in Kinesiology got the gig in the computing services department doing that job. I had to train her too.

Re:If they are correct...

[Anonymous Coward]

This does not matter, I have worked at a community college for four years with my associates degree this will NEVER change. Think about it, this whole thread is about some propeller head, flailing around and wailing about his relevance. This behavior can seem melodramatic, egotistical and aggrandizing, but it will not ever go away. A lot of academics really don't understand anything outside of education, it is quite possible to go from high school, to college, to work at college and never leave, so you will get individuals that are incredibly defensive of what they believe to be accurate. Personally, I don't see traditional colleges going anywhere anytime soon, education and verifying someone's knowledge is still a difficult process, what I do see is an explosion in available resources that support/supplement education and learning. Now, for your particular situation, just keep that job around as a consulting gig, it's not likely to go away and the verified are essentially verifying your ability. Stick with it, consider an education there, or work on getting out in industry and look for a reference at that school. good luck.

Re:If they are correct...

[Darinbob]

But no colleges do things this way except with bad profs. Sorry all you Kahn Academy fans. Good profs will not just recite the same old lecture, but they will ask questions of the class and tailor the lecture to the questions being asked (ie, if they don't understand one concept well the prof will spend more time discussing it but if no one has questions then the next topic is brought up).

And if you do get pre-recorded lectures that's still less than half of a typical college class. Homework, lab assignments, discussion groups, visiting TAs with questions, doing the reading assignments, etc.

Re:If they are correct...

[interkin3tic]

I think that depends on jobs taking online college diplomas as seriously as a physical college diploma in the future. If Kahn Academy graduates are more useful than a brick and mortar school, that school isn't going to be at all competitive and is going to die out, would be my guess. How many schools survive I'm guessing will depend on whether physical colleges can offer something better. The professor mentioned here focuses on the memorization vs training difference. Time will tell which one will be more useful.

I disagree; Lectures are valuable

[AlienSexist]

I, for one, am an Aural learning type. Lectures have served me very well, even to the extent of "deep understanding of concepts." For those that share my learning type, Lecture is often all that we need to ace exams and retain important knowledge. During my studies at the University I attended every single lecture that I could attend and took excellent notes. No amount of reading assignments or labs (also appeal to different learning types) had the same educational impact on me as watching an expert describe the concepts, illustrate them in a live environment, and respond to questions that the students actually have on the subject. A little bit of homework to cement the knowledge was all that was necessary.

Even amongst techies there are those that stay fresh by reading the latest books and others that stay fresh by attending conferences and just listening to what others are doing. There are still others that learn best by grinding away their own personal experiments.

I realize that it is proposed to record lectures once and just make them available. That may help considerably. But my guess is that Humans are naturally tuned to listen to other Humans (oral traditions) and recordings may not bring the right level of engagement.

Re:I disagree; Lectures are valuable

[Velorium]

Actually I'm sorry to say but the whole auditory/visual learner thing was debunked a couple years ago. Huge upset in psychological research in recent times. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091216162356.htm

Re:I disagree; Lectures are valuable

[AlienSexist]

That article is simply a report that outlines a proposed evaluation model and poo-poos past research that didn't use that model. Surrounding that report from Science Daily are others such as: Despite Popularity, Not Everyone Can Successfully Learn Through Online Courses http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080226113511.htm and
Visual Learners Convert Words To Pictures In The Brain And Vice Versa, Says Psychology Study http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090325091834.htm

So what if "Aural" is passe'.

Re:I disagree; Lectures are valuable

[Ben4jammin]

Debunked may be a bit harsh, as they are mostly saying that the studies they reviewed lacked credible findings due to the methodology used. This leaves us with several possible explanations:

1) the idea of different types of learners is not valid
2) the idea is valid but we haven't figured out how to measure it scientifically
3) the idea is close to, but not the actual explanation

Being that our memories are combinations of our senses and that some people do seem to recall certain aspects easier than others I wouldn't say the idea is completely without merit. But as the article you referenced says, there isn't enough proof to justify using scant resources on something that may not help.

Re:I disagree; Lectures are valuable

[bcrowell]

I, for one, am an Aural learning type.

This review of the literature finds no support for the notion of matching instruction to learning styles. The whole thing was hogwash and wishful thinking.

Another issue here is that although the article is specifically about learning physics, you seem to be talking about learning in general. There is very strong evidence that lecturing is simply an ineffective way to teach physics in particular.

Re:I disagree; Lectures are valuable

[brillow]

The theory of "learning types" has been dubunked, there is no evidence of (and is evidence against) the idea that some people absorb information better depending on format.

The thing is the standard used to be that given some readings, a lecture, and the ability to ask questions, you could learn something.

This article restates that standard into saying given readings, and some required class-time where you are forced to do the kind of work and thinking you used to do in your own time, you can learn something.

It rewards students for not being independent learners.

Re:I disagree; Lectures are valuable

[Barrinmw]

...have you never seen someone who learns more from hands on than lecture? Cause I have which is exactly the opposite from the way I am best at learning.

Re:I disagree; Lectures are valuable

[Darinbob]

The problem with the original article is that it has a flawed assumption that lectures are the only thing in education. It even says "if all there is is lectures". That's just stupid. A typical college class is lectures AND sections AND discussion groups AND labs. The lecture hour itself usually involves much more than droning on, the prof is deriving formulas, working out problems, answering student questions, discussing issues with students, etc. You can not replace that with a video taped lecture!

Even the mediocre profs do not just repeat lectures verbatim, they are adjusted based upon how well the students seem to be understanding (what questions are being asked, how badly people did on the last exam, etc). Only the bad profs just drone one like a recording, and there the problem is with the profs and not with the concept of a lecture.

Re:I disagree; Lectures are valuable

[azgard]

I am confused. I know for a fact that I had trouble learning German at school because I have trouble remembering/repeating a sound, but I can remember written words much better. We had a teacher who started in conversational style, and I was unable to catch up. Once they started putting things down onto paper, it became much easier (German has regular pronounciation, mind you).

I wonder how is this (albeit anecdotal) evidence going together with that research.

Re:I disagree; Lectures are valuable

[AthanasiusKircher]

This review of the literature finds no support for the notion of matching instruction to learning styles. The whole thing was hogwash and wishful thinking.

Umm... that's not what the summary at your link says. Your link says that there hasn't been a lot of experimental testing, and many of the studies done with experimental testing have methodological flaws. Of the few that have good methodology, "several" have evidence that disputes learning style matching. That implies that some produce evidence that it is effective.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There haven't been a lot of good studies, and more are needed to decide whether or not it is "hogwash." In fact, the penultimate sentence of your link says exactly that:

However, given the lack of methodologically sound studies of learning styles, it would be an error to conclude that all possible versions of learning styles have been tested and found wanting; many have simply not been tested at all.

I think a lot of the "learning styles" stuff is probably crap too. But your link mostly says we lack good enough evidence to really evaluate it yet.

Discussions

[Dyinobal]

My favorite class in college was, where the professor assigned us a chapter or two to read, and a few things to pay attention to. Then in class we discussed them, and asked questions. It was a lot better than simply listening to him lecture on the topic.

Re:Discussions

[vlm]

Much more common in the soft sciences and liberal arts than in hard science classes.

I had a history class and an English lit class like that.

The history prof just came out and told us that reading the text out loud would be a better lecture than anything the prof could say, or at least thats what his boss, coincidentally the dept chair and author of the text, told him. We all had a laugh over that one. So we were basically forbidden by dilbertian management from having a lecture in that class.

Re:Discussions

[Anonymous Coward]

As an instructor, this is how I prefer to teach. Unfortunately, average reading comprehension is terrible in survey courses. So I can either lecture to reinforce important concepts or let otherwise good students fail because they are poor readers. I teach the same class online and in the classroom and in-class students tend to do better than the online ones. The only difference is listening to me lecture in-class. I posted the same lectures online with narration, but it hasn't been as effective as I had hoped. Interaction with the instructor in small classes (30 or less) seems to be the key for success for students who struggle with the material.

Re:Discussions

[supercrisp]

That's not a lecture course. That's a discussion course. A fair bit of research shows that it's the best way of learning. The problem is bang for your buck. U's want large lecture sections to provide students "contact" hours with professor-rank faculty. Having a faculty member drone away at 200 students is a good way to tell your dean that you're giving general education students access to your research faculty. Without actually giving non-majors access to your research faculty. To be fair to departments, if colleges within the U's really wanted general education students to have contact with professorial faculty, they would allow departments to hire more professors, so that the department wouldn't have to choose between area coverage for majors and service courses for general education students.

Re:Discussions

[Darinbob]

You can have discussions and lectures in the same class. These are not mutually exclusive, and I have never been in a class that was pure lecture with no student feedback. It sounds like the author of the article is just disgruntled about poor profs.

Careful

[msobkow]

Some professors engage their classes in discussion of questions raised during lectures, others just throw up overheads and blab the same speech as the past five years.

I've always been a proponent of class discussion and group learning as opposed to the dissemination of information from on high as being fact.

The most important things you can do in University are to take courses in Logic, Philosophy, and Critical Thinking. Those will teach you to learn and to argue like a civilized human being, preparing you to convince your boss to implement your ideas, your customers to engage your services, and the government to hear your concerns.

Re:Careful

[Lando]

When I teach classes, the coursework tends to vary based on the students in the class. I suppose for teachers that don't know their material or have to go by a strict line by line teaching method, eg some schools prescribe exactly what must be taught and how it has to be taught, just recording the lecture once would be fine. For me, my classes, though they do try to teach the same concepts, I try to structure the information in such a way that they students can relate to them.

Is this always possible? No, I doubt it, while I have from 10-20 students maximum in a class, my physics and mathematics courses that I have taken have hundreds of students in each class and personal attention isn't possible. If the lecture is the same no matter what the class composition is, perhaps lectures could be done away with. The problem of course is that maybe those classes shouldn't be taught in that manner to begin with?

Re:Careful

[Anonymous Coward]

The university i attended, many profs spent half their time telling us anecdotes from their time working on the field. Some of these were academic types who worked part-time with businesses, others were full-time workers who taught part-time. I loved those profs, the anecdotes went a long way to teach us about real-life problems and their solutions, and to prepare us for our careers.

The best was our Law for Math Students professor, he practiced law during the day and taught this class at nights. First lecture, he waved the textbook at us and said "you can read this on your own time, let me tell you about this case i had last week..." Only night course where the lecture hall was packed every time. I personally never read most of the textbook, but i learned a lot about law in that class.

Re:Careful

[interkin3tic]

The most important things you can do in University are to take courses in Logic, Philosophy, and Critical Thinking.

I found the most important things I did in university were beer and sex.

Lectures are an old technology

[TeslaBoy]

dating from the 18th century in their current form, except the slide projector/powerpoint. Ever since my college days 10 years ago, many students were recording sound in lectures rather than take notes. The better of our lecturers put their slides on our network before class, as students who are copying the slides from the screen are really not listening to the lecturer. Now I teach my own classes, this approach allows me to talk around the slides, in a much more open style, following the message rather than the words of the slides. In a way, this style goes back to the lecture style before the slide projector. This story describes the next step. If we could do the talking part before the class, we could use class time for more interactive activities and group/seminar work. However, I maintain that we need a teacher or a TA working with the groups, as many small groups get lost without a little leadership. Maybe these guys have found a better feedback system. My one problem with the recorded lecture is that students can't stop to ask the speaker questions in lecture. While most students never do this, those who do really help understanding and moving the class forwards.

Re:Lectures are an old technology

[afidel]

as students who are copying the slides from the screen are really not listening to the lecturer

Please, I beg you, since you say you are now teaching, take a class on learning modalities! There are MANY students for whom listening and transcribing is going to be a very positive way of reinforcing what they heard. Audio and Visual are not the only ways to learn. Heck in some classes I learned best by putting my head down and listening and then visualizing the concept, to an uninformed teacher or professor it might appear as though I was sleeping or ignoring their teaching and might be offended but the truly great teachers I had knew from my interaction with the class that I was thoroughly absorbing the material.

Re:Lectures are an old technology

[Phaedrus420]

I think that the point of that sentence was that people suck at multitasking. If my attention is focused on making my notes match what I see, then I'm not really listening, and if I have poor eyesight or am trying too hard to keep my copy legible, then I'm SOL.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[Synerg1y]

He's trying to teach you how to think rather than what to think. Fail.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[mrcaseyj]

The only lectures on Artificial Intelligence on Youtube are by Indian professors, but I couldn't understand them through the accent. With lectures on video, you could listen to the best lecturer in the country instead of some third rate professor. They can do a frequently asked questions list and update the lecture according to the questions. Electronic books can be both much shorter and longer. That is, if you can follow the quick example you can move on, if you can't, then you click a link for an expanded explanation. I don't think we should be wasting $50000/yr and the mind of an intelligent person to blab out a lecture like a video projector. One on one or small group help would be a much better use of those resources.

Watch lectures at home, do homework in class?

[Bananatree3]

Why not get all the passive shit done at home - like watching a lecture and taking notes. Then come to class and do all the hard shit in class? Anything not finished in class is then required to be taken home.

Re:Watch lectures at home, do homework in class?

[supercrisp]

As a professor, allow me to say "Ha ha ha!" Or, "Yes, that sounds great, but...." The most common question asked during the last final exams I gave was "Do you have a pencil I can borrow?" Sadly, we're not allowed to treat students as responsible adults who will "get all the passive shit done at home." I wish we could. Otherwise the good students are being penalized by the slow-down necessitated by the chuckleheads.

Re:Watch lectures at home, do homework in class?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then make their grade depend on it. I've never been one to actually do readings or 'passive' stuff outside of class. I would just wait for the professor to lecture about it and maybe skim them before exams (please note I have a 3.93 GPA). This has always been how I've done things... Until I took a history class with a certain professor. He assigned readings to be done outside of class, during class all we did was discuss and analyze the readings. Our grade was roughly 50% discussion based, 50% term paper. If you didn't do the reading, you couldn't discuss, then you'd fail the class.

I am a technology major but I've never gotten more from a class or put more thought into a class than these history courses, I am now in my third with this professor. These are also the hardest classes I've taken in my 4 years in college.

Re:Watch lectures at home, do homework in class?

[sazim]

Spot on.

Re:Watch lectures at home, do homework in class?

[brillow]

Thats why they have the assigned reading in the textbooks (which are like lectures which are written down, amazing!)

Problem is students don't read them, and if you had video lectures, no one would watch those.

What's so wrong with failing students?

Re:Watch lectures at home, do homework in class?

[supercrisp]

Well, Anonymous, I don't know where you're going to school, or what that 3.93 is actually worth. You might be a genius. But you're definitely a slacker. I was too. Until I hit grad school and finally had to buckle down and learn to study. I'd love to make grades dependent upon students coming to class truly prepared. But the reality of the current university climate/system and its funding forces me to choose between that and keeping my family fed (ie, keeping my damn job). I'm too tired to go into the long explanation now, and it's depressing as hell. But basically it boils down to the same thing we've seen in high schools, a sort of "no child left behind." And there are all sorts of carrots and sticks to incentivize not holding students to too high a standard. Given time and energy, I could muster up a good rant on how this seems to have emerged from the increase in administrators and the MBA-style management theories that drive universities and state/federal politics. But, again, I'm facing a day of meetings tomorrow, including, I shit you not, enforced cheering from the faculty about the greatness of our institution.... I think I'm going to go climb into bed and sulk now. (On the slacker thing: the point isn't that silly-shit more or less worthless number but what you actually learn. I made the mistake of not learning enough, caring about the number, the girls, and the beer. Now I wish I'd spent a bit more time in the labs and library.)

Re:Watch lectures at home, do homework in class?

[jrminter]

Depends on the quality. Lots of people have watched Prof. Andrew Ng's (Stanford) Machine Learning video lectures. The latest version (2011) are much better than the 2008/2009 version as one would expect from someone who refines his methods. Highly recommended.

Re:Watch lectures at home, do homework in class?

[bcrowell]

As a professor, allow me to say "Ha ha ha!" Or, "Yes, that sounds great, but...." [...] Sadly, we're not allowed to treat students as responsible adults who will "get all the passive shit done at home." I wish we could.

As a professor, allow me to say, "Ha ha ha! I treat my students as responsible adults who will 'get all the passive shit done at home.'" Works for me. What's stopping you? Cynicism? You don't have tenure yet?

Re:Watch lectures at home, do homework in class?

[Anonymous Coward]

Throw the bums out! Seriously. Just fail them if they don't do EVERYTHING they are asked. If they don't have a pencil, tell them to walk to the college store and buy one, and tell them to hurry, because the test is only one hour. Watch them not forget the pencil, next time.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[cayenne8]

Wait tell they figure out that they can get a guy in India to do the lecture on video for 1/2 the price. Then we will outsource the professors as well.

PLEASE, don't give them any ideas....it was fucking hard enough to understand they back when *I* was in college!!!

I swear there was an Oriental guy teaching one of my calculus classes...maybe Chinese. But it was the hardest thing to not laugh when when he was trying to describe getting the area of a tube from a flat sheet of metal/paper.

He kept over and over doing "Ok..first you roll the shit....then, you take the shit and..."

If Indian instructors are nearly as hard to understand at the tech phone supports I've had from "Bob" lately....well, it will surely degrade the already failing US education system. Hard to learn if you can't understand a damned thing the instructor is trying to say...

Great idea if you don't care about students!

[eepok]

Look-- the vast majority of students learn because they have no choice. Slashdoters that say "public education only held me back as a child" and "I learned more outside of the classroom" are not the norm. The normal person "accidentally" gets caught up with friends, watching movies, and trolling Facebook instead of watching these lecture videos. Those normal people then fail (or worse, cheat).

Too bad for them? No... because if they end up being useless, YOU will feel the consequences. Be it in skilled labor shortages, increase poverty/crime rates, dumbed down video classes to make up for the poor previous education of your cohort, or the removal of funding due to the low passing scores, YOU WILL FEEL THEIR FAILURE.

Real education isn't a plug-and-play option. It's work. Teachers need to work in the classroom and do their best to make sure the students learn as much as possible. It's adaptive, changing, and sometimes will digress to related, but more entertaining, topics to keep long-term interest. These things cannot be done by video.

Get it through your heads. The education of the masses must be done in person by skilled individuals. Preferably in smaller groups.

Qualifier: Distance/video learning can help to enlighten. It can even help to educate people who genuinely want to learn (typically, this works better with adults). Just please understand that kids 4-25 are crap learners on their own. They NEED others to help them learn or else they just won't bother.

Re:Great idea if you don't care about students!

[scamper_22]

But what we can do is dramatically change the providers and costs of education.

With technology, there is almost no reason teachers should be doing their own lesson plans... I've been a teacher. Do people really think every grade 9 Math class is custom tailored? Trust me... it's not. There's a lot of bullcrap to make it seem like they're doing that work. But in the classroom, it's not like that.

The material/tests/activities... are pretty generic.
As a result, you really don't need very 'skilled' people in general public education. What you really need are teachers with reasonable/good class control. A different kind of skill yes... but not one that is often talked about.

In my experience, some of the best teachers in terms of class control and encouragement were some of the least educated. Many others came from other background other than teaching. Probably the two best teachers I saw had came from outside teaching. One was an ex autoworker and the other an ex finance person.

As a result of that, you can dramatically lower the cost of education and improve the quality. I agree that small groups are very important. What does that really mean.

Rather than pay 1 teacher 90k, you can pay 2 teachers 45K and split the class in two. Given that they really don't need advanced degrees to build lesson plans as they're premade... this makes sense. And for some children, the ones who care about them the most (parents) could provide the structure needed.

Re:Great idea if you don't care about students!

[Questy]

>Distance/video learning can help to enlighten. It can even help to educate people who genuinely want to learn (typically, this works better with adults).
I have to agree here. I'm in a distance-learning theology coursework, and I'm doing 10X the work I ever did while I was in college, and learning and retaining more.

Re:Great idea if you don't care about students!

[bcrowell]

You seem to be thinking that the method they're talking about involves replacing live lectures with canned videos of lectures. I can see how you might get that impression from the slashdot summary, but the actual article does a significantly better job of explaining what it's about. It's about replacing traditional lectures, where students sit passively and take notes, with classes where the students interact with each other and/or with the professor.

YOU WILL FEEL THEIR FAILURE

The teaching method described in the article isn't new (it dates back to 1996), and the empirical evidence is that it succeeds, whereas traditional lecturing fails.

Re:Great idea if you don't care about students!

[eepok]

You are 100% right... because this was supposed to reply to a post about distance learning not be a post on its own. /shame

However, in regards to the article itself, the guy is doing nothing new. He's having a discussion session in which he makes sure students learn fewer things in class to a higher degree of success instead of more things learned very lightly. This is why most universities have lecture and discussion sessions for the majority of their courses. The only thing that's even remotely novel is that he uses remote polling so that the scared and shy can respond without fear of being wrong in public (a genuine issue) and thus is able to collect better data.

And the success of the endeavor at all is dependent on seating arrangements and a good mix of extro- to introverts.

Re:Great idea if you don't care about students!

[brillow]

I think a hidden problem is that these people are not fundamentally capable of doing the things the economy needs. All the jobs these people could do are now done by machines, and the phase-space of things a machine cannot do is shrinking rapidly.

What we are currently doing is forcing the incapable into systems they cannot compete in and compensating by lowering standards. These people end up with degrees, but no robust competence.

What we will have to do in the next 30 years or so, when machines are able to do very advanced things (like diagnose disease and perform surgery), is rethink our economic paradigms.

Re:Great idea if you don't care about students!

[eepok]

This is not exactly a school of the masses, now is it? They have 60 students in their entire school, charge $17,000 per year in tuition, and tuition only makes up 75% of their revenue.

By contrast, the State of California, in 2009/2010, spent $8,452 per student for its entire educational bureaucracy. That's less than 40% of what that school charges.

Now consider any application process to get into the school... and the parents submitting those applications... and all the additional resources to which the students will be privy.

Re:Great idea if you don't care about students!

[eepok]

That may be a hidden problem because the huge "in your face" problem is that universities have never been "workforce creators". A university is a place of creating better people (for a better society), life-long learners, and academic specialists. In many circumstances, the people that do well in that kind of environment can translate whatever they do at university to a well-paying career regardless of major.

However, with higher education now seen as a right of citizenship (in the US, since the 1970s), standards have been reduced and the universities are expected to adjust their mission from "answering the questions of life, the universe, and everything", to "make people that know how to put cog A on rod B". Where previously, education was good for what it could do for the world, it is being relied upon, from kindergarten to PhD, to balance out the economy which was screwed by people gambling with mortgages and pensions.

Neither the university, nor the whole of public education, has ever existed as a prop for the national economy. But it is being relied upon as such now.

What the nation wants is TRADE SCHOOLS, but the idea of being educated *to work* and not getting really, really rich without much effort is beyond the limit or scope of expectations of the modern American. That's why we fantasize about people getting rich quick and idolize multimillionaires who "made it" by creating one simple product or getting "discovered" in one small movie. The people say that the economy needs skilled *workers*, that means we need "trade schools*, but few are willing to be "limited" by going to such a school.

If there is no potential of making millions, the people don't want it. They're addicted to that "potential". That's why they vote Republican while poor.

Academics doesn't deserve live performances?

[Valacosa]

"With modern technology, if all there is is music, we don't need musicians to do it. ... Get 'em to do it once, put it on the Web, and fire the musicians."

Careful where you go with that line of thinking. And if anyone says, "there's a difference between a physics lecture, and something creative like music," I would respond that you've never had a good physics teacher. Physics is very creative, once you start getting into the upper levels.

Eric Mazur gave a talk here at the University of Waterloo, and his talk was not about getting rid of lectures, per se. That's something the NPR reporter seems to assume, to the point where (s)he inserted soundbytes from an entirely different physics prof. Mazur's focus is about making the classtime much more interactive, to give students feedback about whether or not they really grasp the concepts. Again, it's about guided creativity. And no, you can't get rid of the professor in that situation.

(Yes, I was a physics major.)

Re:Academics doesn't deserve live performances?

[steelfood]

Perhaps the lecture format in question is where there are 100+ students sitting in a lecture hall listening to the information the professor is madly trying to get through. In many of these classes, there is little if any time for questions, and certainly little time to review or repeat.

But then, there are good lecturers and bad lecturers. Most people fall into the latter category. The good lecturers engage and even entertain the audience. They move at a pace where both the slower students would be able to understand and the faster students won't get bored. They teach better because they understand the way the human mind works and learns (which in its fundamental form is surprisingly not as varied as you'd think).

But as most people are not good lecturers, the smaller class sizes and increase in interactivity would be a necessary start. Before education became widespread, people learned specialized skills by becoming an apprentice to a master. While there is an argument for teachers and classrooms, there's also a period in education where the class format starts to lose its effectiveness. And things like reducing class size and increasing interactivity is effectively changing the teacher-student relationship closer to a master-apprentice one.

Of course, despite this, there will always be the oddballs who have photographic memory, or who pick things up on their own intuitively with barely any external interaction. But those are the exceptions, not the norm. They typically need to and should be handled differently, in the same way as there is "special" education for those who are significantly slower. Unfortunately, a lot of potential is wasted trying to put both types of people into the same classroom, whether its by some misguided every-child-is-a-winner mentality or by the if-one-can-do-it-they-all-can mentality.

I do agree with your initial sentiments though. Subject matter is irrelevant. Good teachers will strive to do the same types of things in the classroom irrespective of subject, even if the approaches vary.

Re:Academics doesn't deserve live performances?

[vampire_baozi]

Anecdote, not sure about the veracity: supposedly David Hilbert had a mathematics PhD student who quit, and changed his major to poetry.

Hilbert's response?

"Good, he didn't have enough imagination for mathematics."

(Translated from the German, of course)

Re:Academics doesn't deserve live performances?

[Darinbob]

You have good profs and bad profs. You also have good students and bad students. A good student can not just sit by passively and a good prof can not allow a student to just sit by passively. Even if the lecture is the most boring thing in the world the student has the responsibility to do something with the time before the next lecture; do the homework, go to the prof's or TA's office to ask questions, read the text book, etc. Even with a bad professor much of the responsibility for the failure to learn lies with the student.

Re:Academics doesn't deserve live performances?

[martin-boundary]

Good lecturers can be left to do their thing, but I question whether the majority of average or even bad lecturers should be encouraged to attempt more interactive sessions. In theory that sounds fine, but anyone who's tried to keep a meeting on track knows how difficult it is to stay focused and move through items at the required rate.

IMHO, an average lecturer who sat around talking about problems with students rather than lecturing would let time slip badly, and simply not get through all the material in the allotted semester hours. That's bad, because the students will either be left to learn the missing topics without supervision, and/or the lecturer will spend countless office hours answering questions from students knocking at the door when the exam approaches. For all its faults, the structured lecture with students listening and maybe asking questions at the end is not so bad.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[Samalie]

Well, really....what IS the value of a college education today?

With the recession, so many people have gone back to school for graduate degrees that the Masters is rapidly becomming (if not already) the new Bachelor's degree.

But the reality of it all...it is complete bullshit. Going to college doesn't guarantee success, or even a career. Hell, it doesn't guarantee you sweet fuck all...you have taken 4 years and god only knows how much money that got you a piece of paper that suggests you should be able to do some task with some level of competency.

Now, if you're my doctor...yeah, I want you to have that piece of paper that says "M.D." on it. I want my lawyer to be able to read and interpet legalese (although, quite frankly, I do a better job of it than most of the lawyers I know). I want the engineer designing the bridge to have a P. Eng. and actually understand that shit, since lives are on the fucking line. But for a netadmin? You come in with a 4-year Bachelor of Science in CS looking to get an entry-level netadmin post I'm going to see you as vastly over-qualified and probably reject you flat out. Fuck, in my home province, it is mandatory for a librarian to have a minimum of a masters degree for a job that paid in 2004 less than 40K a year...make sense out of that fucker. The poor person we hired at the city the one year had something like $100K in student debt & pratically cried when she saw the offer.

The education bubble is the next great crash to come, where people finally stand up and realize that getting fleeced for $40K a year by an institution so that little Timmy can have a degree in Mediterranian Art which will serve him well while he cooks fucking fries at McD's for the rest of his life just isn't fucking worthwhile, and you will see a re-surgence of cheaper "technical schools" that teach you what you need to know in your chosen profession & fuck all the pretentious bullshit.

Of course, they (the schools) have "educated" us all on how special and unique and wonderful the fucking college experience is, and how shallow and empty your life will be if you don't go to university. Well seriously, fuck that shit. I drank beer, fucked girls, and even made the occasional class when I was in college. I could drink beer & hire a metric fuckton of whores for the prices universities charge today.

Education is an over-hyped over-valued industry, and it is just a matter of time till the public tells universities to go fuck themselves.

(As I funnel absurd amounts of my pay into college funds for the kids...yeah, I'm a fucking hypocrite)

Princeton has been doing this for a long time

[PolygamousRanchKid]

See: http://www.princeton.edu/admission/whatsdistinctive/experience/the_preceptorial_system/

Or just google it: http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&source=hp&q=princeton+preceptorial+system&pbx=1&oq=princeton+precep&aq=2&aqi=g3&aql=&gs_sm=c&gs_upl=1334l4298l0l7175l16l12l0l2l2l0l186l1404l5.7l14l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=da70dd10971034b4&biw=1376&bih=790

Well, I liked it.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[cayenne8]

Porsche Cayennnnnnnnnnnnne Turbo! V8!!!

cayenne8 !!!

Nope...I've never owned car car with more than 2x functional seats, and I'd not take a SUV if someone gave one to me.

I had a Porsche once...'86 911 Turbo, fun car, but Katrina killed it.

The name is for the cayenne chile pepper.

agree and disagree

[rish87]

Personally I hated a lot of "alternative" teaching methods some of my professors tried during my undegrad years. Small "group work" was the most painful, useless time wasting exercise in my academic life. These "peer learning sessions" usually consisted of the smart students doing everything while the dumb or just slower kids sat there. It was times like these when I wondered why I was paying $20k a year to teach myself and have useless students piggyback off my grades.

That being said, I had a lot of equally frustrating classes where the professor did the exact opposite and taught in the classical face-to-blackboard lecture style. I would sit there frantically copying notes for an hour and realize I had no idea what I just listened to, again wondering why I was paying $20k a year to read condensed notes taken directly from a textbook.

The best classes, however, were a mix of these techniques. One class would dedicate about 1/2 to 3/4 of each lecture to slow, explanatory and engaging lecture with the rest of the time being dedicated to class-wide example problem solving. Another class would dedicate an entire lecture or two each week to solving a number of representative problems from the homework as a class, introducing or reinforcing the thought processes needed to go about learning HOW to solve the problems. These professors took the time to engage the students and walk them through the problem solving, not just quickly write down decades old lecture notes with their backs to the students.

Re:agree and disagree

[drcesteffen]

I also recall trying to make notes so fast that I could not focus on the lecture until after the class. The best lecture classes covered material from many different text books and research papers so they did not duplicate the text book. My best class was in grad school where the professor switched the class from meeting 2 days a week for 1.5 hours a day to 3 days a week for 2 hours a day. The first three hours of the week was spent on lecture. For the second three hours of the week, the professor would pull a card from his deck of cards of student names. If your card came up, you were required to present a problem solution / proof on the chalk board. The rest of the class was required to try to find errors in your proof. Solved problems were immediately retired. It was fair to find the solution by literature search or by solving it yourself as both are valuable skills. Weekly problem sets would consist of about 25 problems and would be in play for 2 - 3 weeks. The professor scored the problems as to difficulty from 1 (least difficult) to 5 (most difficult). The problems were non-trivial. I recall only one person ever solved a 5 point problem. I recall solving mostly 2 and 3 point problems. I may have solved a 4 point problem or two. I progressed from falling asleep reading a linear algebra book at the beginning of the semester to being excited reading the same linear algebra book at the end of the semester. Which is to say, the material sunk in. For me, the material only sinks in when I struggle trying to solve problems. It would have been educational to see examples of how people used the knowledge from the class in a profitable business, perhaps in a handout.

Why even record your own faculty?

[Rogerborg]

Just buy in someone else's video, spend the savings on better dorm rooms for the Chinese and Korean students who are funding your Dean's yacht. It's not like he really cares whether they learn anything, as long as they (or superficially similar professional exam-sitters) get good passes and keep the school's 'reputation' up.

Try small, private universities for undergrad...

[ravenscar]

I attended a small, private university and most of my 3rd and 4th year courses had 7-9 students + the professor. Many of those classes were structured into 3 hour blocks. It was great. There was plenty of time to explore topics together, and in a way that resulted in everyone gaining a fairly thorough understanding of the material.

That school couldn't provide the kind of resources necessary for grad work, but it was great for undergrad.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[hedwards]

The trick there is to specialize and only get the certificate that applies to what you're wanting to do. I got my TESL last summer and spent much of the time since working part time, but starting next month I'll have a good job for at least the next year. After that I should have few problems getting more work as I'm willing to relocate pretty much anywhere in the world. And some of those jobs pay really well. $50k for a job in Afghanistan and virtually no taxes is quite a huge chunk of change.

I always wanted them to get rid of discussion

[afabbro]

Discussion sections were the biggest waste of time in college. Get 20 undergrads and one grad student in a room to "discuss". I was a history major and every class had the same two or three hours a week devoted to these tedious discussions.

I did not care what my fellow undergrads thought. I cared what the guy with the PhD thought. My fellow undergrads were spouting off their own ill-informed ideas (as was I, to get credit). Complete waste of time. We'd have been better served to spend those 8-10 hours a week reading.

Re:I always wanted them to get rid of discussion

[edremy]

You're missing the real point of discussion classes. If you're doing it *right* you should be preparing material ahead of time. Your opinion shouldn't be uninformed- you need to do the prep work to grasp enough of the subject to at least be able to understand what you know, what you don't and what other folks do/don't understand.

The class I teach has students doing a lot of presentation. Could I do a better job than they could? Of course. But that's not the point- it's that they have to learn it well enough to present it. That's hard, but you learn things far, far better if you have to teach someone else about it.

Re:I always wanted them to get rid of discussion

[AthanasiusKircher]

My fellow undergrads were spouting off their own ill-informed ideas (as was I, to get credit). Complete waste of time. We'd have been better served to spend those 8-10 hours a week reading.

Sounds like your teachers were doing it wrong (as most teachers do when they lead discussion sections).

First off, you should have been spending 8-10 hours per week reading, in order to prepare informed comments for discussion. Second, your section leaders should have been guiding the discussion in such a way as to make sure salient points were made about the material. For example, if you had two readings that week on similar material, the instructor could be keeping track of differences brought up in discussion. If those were then summarized by the instructor, it could lead to a more critical discussion on the respective positions of the two readings, why they complement each other, why the class might think one reading is better than another, etc.

The point of discussion sections is supposed to be that you require a greater understanding of material to speak an opinion of it aloud in class than you do to passively sit and listen to a lecture. The instructor's role is to guide those comments in such a way as to make important pedagogical points (while also allowing some freedom for the discussion to meander into areas the class finds interesting). If no one is making the relevant pedagogical points, the instructor should step in an make them him/herself, or ask a leading question to get things back on track.

I've been in classes where students are just spouting random naive opinions too. In such cases, it's the instructor's fault that the class was useless. (It may be the students' fault too for not doing the reading or whatever, but in that case, the instructor needs to come up with a way to force students to do the reading and be prepared for discussion, or else shift to a different class meeting structure.)

Agree but *keep* the class time

[perpenso]

I've had some professors provide their standard lectures on video to watch at our convenience before a class. However what made this a vast improvement is that we still had classes, the class time was used for interaction between the professor and the students. The professor would discuss the lecture, call on students to offer comments, solve some problem, etc. The professor also fostered, directed and refereed discussion and debate between the students. This was so much better than listening to stock lectures that the professor had given many times before. The professors even preferred spending the time interacting, it wasn't just the students.

This interaction between professor and student and between students is what makes the university experience more valuable than just watching videos of lectures. I think it may also be getting back to a more classical university experience, more education, less factory.

Re:Agree but *keep* the class time

[Lawrence_Bird]

I agree with you in part. Every class has easier material as well as review of topics thought to have been learned elsewhere. Those should be able to be on canned video. But I think once you get to the main content of the class there is something to be said for being able to interrupt the professor to ask questions or clarify a point. Writing them down while watching a video isn't the same. Not to mention that sometimes other students will ask something you had not considered. What I do think would be beneficial is making the lecture (with interaction) available online afterwards for future review.

Of course, none of this is really relevant to Eco 101.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[Archangel Michael]

Education is an over-hyped over-valued industry,

Education is not an industry, it is a lifestyle. Most Universities still don't get this, nor do a large proportion of those that attend it. ALL Universities do is certify that you've gone through a prescribed obstacle course towards a particular career. My Degree is in a field I've never actually practice in, it is worthless other than for a check box on Applications. To Employers it means "will jump through hoops". My CSV is filled with all sorts of "education" that came after college, and I've stopped looking for Certificates of any sort, having a bunch that are completely worthless (Novel, Win 2000 Server etc).

Suffice it to say, Universities are about getting your first job, and that check box. Everything else after that is about real education as a personal passion.

fire the faculty?

[cyfer2000]

I thought their are in universities to write research proposals and get money from public or private funding source like NSF, DOD, DOE, Green Peace, big oils... So the universities can cut a overhead (~40%) from those funding. Teaching and students are just pretentious facades.

Great rant with no basis in fact!

[Okian Warrior]

Children are voracious learners. Given the chance, they will learn anything and everything they can get their hands on. If you don't disabuse them of the practice, they will carry it on into adulthood.

As homeschool parents know, give the child access to materials - the internet, a CD of dinosaur books, an electronics experimenter's kit - and they will happily figure it out at their own pace, on their own schedule, and in a sequence that makes sense to them.

Forcing kids to learn your subjects at your pace by forcing them to sit still and quiet while you drone on is hard work, and it only teaches one thing: learning is not fun.

For example: How many English classes require students to write book reports, on works which are considered "classic" but not really relevant or interesting? This only makes an association between reading and hard work. It's rare to see an adult who likes to read for enjoyment after a highschools' worth of treatment this way.

I see this all the time in adults. The vast majority think of any type of learning as "tough", "boring", and "not worth the effort". They won't try anything new unless it's forced on them by life circumstances. They have lost the joy of learning.

Learning new things is an evolutionary survival trait, yet we spend 13+ years of a kids life teaching them not to enjoy it.

The standard teaching approach by lecturing has been in use for over 2000 years. Do you suppose that maybe there are more effective ways? Perhaps by experimenting or using our new technology we can raise our adult productivity.

Some professor is experimenting with different methods. I applaud his attempts and eagerly await the results.

Re:Great rant with no basis in fact!

[scamper_22]

Whatever works is great. No where do I say the premade stuff should just be lectures. It also includes activities and games and experiments...

But what technology allows is for any new lecture, experiment, activity to be quickly used by almost anyone on the planet.

Suffice to say I don't subscribe to the idea that children are capable of making their own decisions. The older they get, the more choice they should have of course.

I do think most things are taught... some will use the term 'indoctrinated'... I call it culture and I use that in a very broad way.

Learning is a great trait built into us... but so are many traits. The trait to be lazy, sexual, dominant, abusive, exploitative, enjoy life...

It's great that there are many kids who take their built in desire to learn and run with it. Many unfortunately partake of the other things. Both as a matter of genetics and/or their upbringing.

Many kids need to be taught things for their own good.

Re:Great rant with no basis in fact!

[Anonymous Coward]

Adapting to different circumstances and getting to grips with situations that are not really fun in the strictest sense and are controlled by others is also a very useful skill to learn early on because sometimes you just cannot escape from the reality which has you listening. I certainly was very unhappy at times until I realized that it's me who is the problem in those situations. It's even easier to find ways to learn and have fun doing what you like when you don't waste all your time and energy fighting the inevitable. And: Learning is not always fun and games. For some deep insights you need to invest hard and continuous work. Reading papers or books (or a sendmail manual or a guide to fill in your income tax forms etc.) is often not a very fun activity, but the knowledge gained can be employed in order to have fun or at least make time to have fun. It's better to try to come up with your own fun than to expect of your environment to cater to your very human desire to enjoy yourself every single minute of your life. Trust me, it's really a lot easier that way.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[Samalie]

Education is not an industry, it is a lifestyle.

And that, really, is precisely my point. And the universities DO get it, although most of the sheep going to university do not.

Colleges/Universities (which exception to the best of the best of the Ivory League) are even marketing ON the experience now. Meet friends that will last a lifetime! All that warm and fuzzy babble they spew to try to get you to spend your dollars at their institution. And in that, it has become an industry, rank with bullshit advertising, no different than the constant bull fighting between Coke and Pepsi...education has become less about the education you get and more about the college experience.

Well, if anyone reading is looking for the college experience, I can sum it up for you:

Get drunk. Fuck lots of people. Get VD - hopefully one treatable by a shot in the cock and not one that is uncureable. Get drunk more. Join a group of like-minded people to get drunk with. Copy lecture notes off of that one asshole that actually goes to class. Drink copious amounts of caffiene, commit all the spoon-fed bullshit to memory, and vomit it back up. Pay $100K over 4+ years, get a piece of paper that allows you to tick off a box on a job application.

Yeah, that's fucking valuable.

Why Math Lectures Are Useless

[Ben_R_R]

As a college senior, I've taken my share of lectures in various disciplines. One thing I've noticed with lectures, especially math lectures, is that when you are sitting there watching the professor walk you through the problem steps, it is very easy to overestimate your grasp of the subject. You follow all the lectures and do well on the homework, so you figure your good to go for the final. Then there comes the exam, and you find out all you really knew how to do was some textbook assisted string manipulation, and you are screwed on the questions that would be easy if you understood the intuition better. It's difficult to teach the intuition behind things to a room full of students, because each one will have a different "Ah-Ha!" conceptual explanation. For example Partial Differentiation. I got it when it was explained as a cross section of a higher dimensional shape. My friend, when working with gradients and vector fields in physics. (It boils down to the same thing, but it's the way you start to attack the problem that matters) There is no way to give a room full of students individual intuitions, so most professors default to proofs. (Which are probably intuitive enough for the professor anyway...) But since you can get the proofs from the book, there is not really a good reason to go to proof lectures, unless you like things read to you. (Which is probably helpful to some, but useless for me)

Re:What is the real motivation?

[mwvdlee]

Certification is not for you.
It's to cover the ass of the HR person that hires you.

Inquiry-based learning: nothing new

[feranick]

It's nothing new. It has been around for years and it has been (correctly) advocated as a much better way to teach and learn over conventional lecturing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquiry-based_learning

Re:What is the real motivation?

[Lawrence_Bird]

THey already have that... its call a TA

Lectures are good for a quick overview

[Colin Smith]

What's it about. what's it mean.

Some/Many though are write/copy or photocopy/blank stare exercises. Completely useless. The whole point of a human being is interaction.

Just to say, Kahn Academy is a good and could become a fabulous resource, along with Project Gutenberg, Google Books, Wikibooks.

One thing they are all missing is how the elements relate to one another, and to the real world. A complaint I have about conventional teaching as well.

Re:Lectures are good for a quick overview

[medv4380]

One thing they are all missing is how the elements relate to one another, and to the real world. A complaint I have about conventional teaching as well.

That's my point. If your options are Conventional Teaching vs Kahn Academy then Kahn Academy will replace Conventional Teaching. Small group peer instruction is far too expensive for anyone except the wealthy to implement, and they already get it and pay for it with private schools.

Re:Lectures are good for a quick overview

[Darinbob]

People seem to make this assumption that "conventional teaching" is just an idiot in front of the classroom reciting the same lecture from ten years ago. That's bullshit; the problem there isn't the lecture the problem is the professor. Even in a large overcrowded classroom for first year calculus the profs can keep the class engaged during a lecture. If some profs can't do this then dump those profs; you will just make things worse if you rely on prerecorded lectures.

I teach physics in a workshop, not lecture ...

[StupendousMan]

... and it's okay.

At RIT, we switched from the traditional lecture + lab approach to the "workshop" approach about six years ago. The students meet in a room with small tables and maximum class size of 42, three times a week for two hours each. The room has equipment at all the tables, so that students can quickly set up small experiments which may not take the entire 2-hour meeting.

I taught in the traditional manner for about seven years, and in this manner for an equal duration. Does the workshop have advantages? Sure: students are less likely to fall asleep because they are often working examples, and because they are in a small, well-lit room. I can walk around and talk to individual students for a minute or two at a time, so I can find those who are having problems and try to help them. It's easy to introduce a concept, give one simple example, then ask the students to do another example, within a span of 20 or 40 minutes. In some cases, this cycle of introduction - observation - action may help students to understand or remember the material.

But there are disadvantages, too: in a workshop, it's difficult to move away from the median student. I can't go too much faster or deeper, because it's clear that many students are not getting it; so some students are held back. I can't slow down for the slowest learners, either, because it becomes obvious that the majority of the class is bored. This approach is MUCH MORE EXPENSIVE than the traditional one, because we need to offer 10 or 15 sections of the class each quarter; that means a lot more faculty time. The rooms can't be used for any other classes, and the AV requirements are pretty steep -- we need to spend around $10K just on projectors each year. We need more equipment than we would have in traditional labs, and that stuff isn't cheap.

It's not clear that this approach causes students to learn any better; some are helped, some are hurt. It's difficult to compare student achievement in workshops vs. lectures, because at the same time that workshops were introduced, we changed the content of our classes as well.

My summary, after years of experience: not a silver bullet, a lot more fun to teach, more expensive overall.

Re:I teach physics in a workshop, not lecture ...

[williamhb]

There's a happy medium that uses a lot less staff time. I'm trying to push this out in the Intelligent Book (sorry, gratuitous plug). And that's to make the lecture interactive, without having to redesign the whole course. The first few slides are my same slides from last year to give you a quick intro to what we're talking about today. But my next slide is a quiz that happens on the main screen and you interact using your phone/iPad/laptop and there's a live Twitter-like on the lecture screen as well as spoken class discussion. The slide after that is a video from Khan academy, and still the discussion is live on the lecture screen. The one after thatis a handy simulation I found at another site, and still the class discussion goes on with the question "what'll happen if I increase the value of this variable?"...

Re:I teach physics in a workshop, not lecture ...

[bcrowell]

Thanks for your post! I teach at a community college in California where the maximum class size is 25 anyway. (Lecture and lab are in the same room, with the same students and teacher.) I use mostly interactive engagement techniques, mixed with snippets of straight lectures, demos, etc. We don't use any techniques that require expensive AV stuff; what techniques that you use require that?

At RIT, we switched from the traditional lecture + lab approach to the "workshop" approach about six years ago.

Does this mean that you've completely eliminated traditional labs? (IMO that would be a shame.)

Do you have any data on how students did on a test such as the FCI before and after the switch to the workshop method?

You descrive not being able to do certain things (e.g., "it's difficult to move away from the median student"). Are there constraints that force you to teach a certain way on a certain day? If you want to do something totally different on a given day, is there some reason why you can't?

Re:I teach physics in a workshop, not lecture ...

[StupendousMan]

The "expensive AV stuff" is 2 projectors per room (we need to project onto opposite walls because students sitting at tables aren't all facing in the same direction), times 7 workshop rooms. 14 projectors cost a lot to maintain.

Yes, we've completely eliminated traditional labs from the introductory physics sequence.

There is a small amount of data on how students did on the FCI before and after the switch, but not enough to be significant. I don't think that the FCI is a very good way to measure the knowledge of a student in physics, by the way.

When I said "move away from the median student", I mean "teach at a level which is far from that appropriate for the median student." In a lecture, one can choose to go faster or deeper, knowing that one may leave most of the class behind; the lack of feedback makes it easy. In a workshop, because one is so close to the students, one sees the effect and it's hard to ignore it. The question of "should one teach to the level of the median student" is a big one, of course, and I can't address it here.

Re:I teach physics in a workshop, not lecture ...

[bcrowell]

Hmmm...sounds like you're simply finding that you have to do your teaching within a system that's poorly designed. Why not fix the bad design?

I don't think that the FCI is a very good way to measure the knowledge of a student in physics, by the way.

Are you talking about false positives, or false negatives?

In other words, suppose that class A has a very low average on the FCI, while B has a very high one.

I would maintain that the teacher of class A is incompetent, and is in denial if he won't admit that fact and try to change; the FCI is ridiculously basic, and any student who's at all competent should score very highly on it.

Or are you talking about class B? The evidence I've seen is that there basically aren't students who do well on the FCI but are bad at problem-solving. Is there some other area where you think class B might be weak?

We don't need ...

[jackspenn]

We don't need universities or schools anymore. I have learned more about historic European and Russian firearms (something I find iteresting) and Linux (something that helps me earn a living) from youtube videos and online blogs and meetups than I have from countless books and experts who have come out of academia.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[Synerg1y]

Haha, ironic, certifications are nothing but memorization. I've met so many retards who are certified up the ass, who have their head up there as well. Ex. guy w 12 MS certs asking how our vmware network works, less than useless, I figured that stuff out as part of the job and got a lot better at it w time where I can set up from scratch. Based on the prof. teaching theory, certifications can't exist in such theory. People who are tools (95% of corporate employees) would struggle too, so this learning style isn't good for corporate America at all, but rather for entrepreneurs, r&d, self-employment, cornering niches, stuff that requires thinking and innovation and *shock* common sense.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only lectures on Artificial Intelligence on Youtube are by Indian professors, but I couldn't understand them through the accent. .

I guess you missed this https://www.ai-class.com/

Moore Method does this, at least in Mathematics...

[nonsensical]

The Moore Method is an effective way to make students think. The class meets regularly, the students each must have some proofs they've done at home which they must present to the class instead of the professor lecturing, they instead, along with other students critique the presenter on their proofs, pointing out flaws and holes. Further students must compete with each other to present enough proofs to pass the class, and each proof can only be done once.

Outside reading is discouraged, and the class is selected based on having the right experience in the subject (not too much, and not too little) to ensure fairness.

The result is a grueling, yet often very interesting class, as every problem that a student presents, you've probably already worked on and as such have intimate knowledge of the problem which leads to further understanding and new insights.

This story is about Learner Centered Environments

[stewardwildcat]

I am a graduate student in Astronomy and part of my dissertation is studying these active engagement techniques. It seems that many people on here are quick to jump the gun and give an opinion before understanding why we say the lecture doesn't matter anymore. Teachers in the workshops I help with also get confused as to what these words mean.

People learn in a variety of different ways yet lecture is the most common form of material dissemination. This is wonderful for the people who can soak in all of the information and draw conclusions themselves. This leaves many people behind if all they have time for is writing down facts and attempting to keep up with the basic material. Since most courses in high school and college no longer require intense critical thinking, a quick memorization of facts will allow most students to succeed and think they "KNOW" material. When asked to apply it many are unable to. Interactive engagement techniques do not require the removal of lecture from the learning process they just put less emphasis on it. Lecture is the ONLY way to present enough material in a college course and is critical to the active engagement techniques. Students must be given the basic knowledge before they can be left to begin their own critical thinking process.

We know from research that people learn by linking new concepts to concepts they already have a model for. Most of these models are incorrect when it comes to astronomical and physical phenomena. A student who has misconceptions may still think they understand the material and be able to respond correctly to some questions. However, when a question specifically calls out a known misconception, the model the student is using to reason through the question will lead them to the incorrect answer every time. What active engagement techniques employ is social conversation. Lecture tutorials are one form of this learner centered engagement. Students are given a 20 minute lecture on a topic such as the seasons. Then they spend 20 minutes with a partner working through a socratic dialog (in their lecture tutorial workbook made up of research validated questions and "fake" student responses). The pair works on coming to consensus and discussing the reasons for their answers on each question. As the students work through the dialog the concepts become more challenging and the misconceptions are challenged. Often students are required to look back at previous answers (known to be commonly incorrect) after some misconceptions have been challenged. Students are engaged in their own meta-cognition and are forced to confront their own and others ideas. This active form of discussing and defending your ideas allows for misconceptions to be overcome and new concepts to be better rooted in the brain.

For those of you who think this is useless. We performed a study of lecture tutorials in our classes. We split the classes into the top 50% of students and the bottom 50% of students. Before lecture the top students are scoring 50% on concepts not yet covered, those at the bottom are near 10%. After lecture BOTH groups are around 50-55%. This means lecture is helping students catch up with the basic information they may not have had. However lecture only got the class to FAILING! After a lecture tutorial in class, both groups are now performing at the 70% level. TWO WHOLE LETTER GRADES BETTER!!! This is why we say lecture is not the important part of the course because the student engagement is helping everyone.

So if lecture is only a means of giving out the information then there is not a critical need for professors to stand in front of the classroom at this time. We can hire actors which are far better at the job of dictating and making material exciting and record it. The professors job becomes important later when students have questions not for being the talking head.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[hedwards]

Not really, if you're willing to pay enough for qualified people to apply, the certificate is basically just a screening criteria. When you're doing the interview and checking references you should be determining if the person knows what they're talking about.

Ultimately, degrees, certificates and diplomas as requirements rarely have anything to do with the job these days and are all about restricting the number of applications that the HR drones have to look through. As if they have anything else that they ought to be doing.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[DogDude]

I disagree completely. There's a world of difference between a person who attended college, and one who didn't or slept/partied through it. A good public University education is worth the price.

I use teaching methods similar to Mazur's.

[bcrowell]

The slashot summary isn't terribly accurate, and even if you violate the social norms of /. and click through to read the article, the article is pretty sketchy as well. We're already getting comments from people who think this is about substituting video lectures for live lectures, and that's totally inaccurate.

This method is not new. I teach physics at a community college (not at Hahvahd like Mazur, alas), and I've been using methods similar to his for about 15 years. I learned about them from Mazur's book, which was published in 1996.

It's also not just some guy's opinion about how to teach. It's solidly backed up by research.

Let's start from the evidence. There is very strong evidence that lecturing is a terrible way to teach physics. The classic studies work like this. You give students a multiple-choice test at the beginning of the semester on very simple, basic concepts of physics. What hits the ground first, a larger rock or a smaller rock? What forces act on a book that's lying on a table? They do badly, but you expect that, because most of them haven't had high school physics. Then you teach a semester's worth of physics to them and give them the test again to measure how much they've improved. The usual statistic used to measure their improvement is the gain, G, defined as G=(final score-initial score)/(100%-initial score). In other words, if they haven't improved at all, G=0, and if they've improved as much as it was possible for them to improve, G=1. With classes that use traditional lecturing -- even by experienced, award-winning teachers who get glowing reviews from their students, are enthusiastic, and put a great deal of effort into their lectures -- you get about G=0.25. In other words, the students have developed very little conceptual understanding beyond what they came in with. On the other hand, if you use interactive teaching techniques that force students to participate actively and talk about concepts, you can usually get much higher G's.

The evidence is that it doesn't really matter very much what specific interactive technique you use, as long as it's interactive and deals with concepts. Mazur pioneered a technique called peer instruction. Just to be concrete, I'll describe his specific technique. You require the students to read the book *before* they come to class. You enforce this with reading quizzes given when they walk into lecture. The class consists basically of a bunch of multiple-choice conceptual questions. You pop up one of the questions on the screen and ask students to show you their initial opinion about which answer is right. This can be done with expensive electornic "clickers" or with cheap pieces of cardboard marked A, B, C, and D. If you see that almost everyone got it right, you briefly confirm that, and then move on. If they didn't, you have them break up into small groups and discuss the question. You walk around and listen a lot without saying much. Then you have them vote again again. The theory is that the right answer is supposed to win out over the wrong answers in the discussion. When it's time to give a test, you make sure that the test includes some purely conceptual questions, because otherwise students will tend to resist dropping the "plug and chug" approach they're used to and switching to focusing on concepts.

Mazur's book shows data where he got G~0.5 with this method. Nobody has ever gotten a G that high with traditional lecturing. Over the years since 1996, many of us who use interactive techniques have refined what we do, and it's not uncommon to significantly higher G's. The average for three of us who teach freshman calc-based physics at my school last semester was 0.7.

A common concern is that if the teacher d

Re:I use teaching methods similar to Mazur's.

[williamhb]

The class consists basically of a bunch of multiple-choice conceptual questions. You pop up one of the questions on the screen and ask students to show you their initial opinion about which answer is right. This can be done with expensive electornic "clickers" or with cheap pieces of cardboard marked A, B, C, and D.

Or live on the lecture screen from students' phones, iPads, tablets, etc, with live discussion alongside it if you want (for the things students aren't game to say in person). As it's live, and there is an option to let students move their votes, I've found it's sometimes entertaining revealing the votes and then watching them change as the discussion happens -- for instance all flocking to a common misconception that has the most votes on first reveal, and then shifting to the right answer as the discussion happens.

Re:I use teaching methods similar to Mazur's.

[bcrowell]

Interesting. What about students who don't own a cell phone, or who only have voice on their cell phone, not data? (Actually, I don't own a cell phone myself.)

Re:I use teaching methods similar to Mazur's.

[williamhb]

Interesting. What about students who don't own a cell phone, or who only have voice on their cell phone, not data? (Actually, I don't own a cell phone myself.)

At the University of Queensland, where I was teaching the class, about a third of students tended to vote, which I found to be enough to get a sense of the class understanding and get a discussion going. I'd expect that to rise year-on-year as most students have a phone of some sort, they replace them every two years -- standard length of a phone contract here -- and most new phones can do WiFi these days (we've got good WiFi coverage across campus). The remainder, however, still stayed attentive (more so than in a straight lecture) -- there's something engaging about taking part in a class discussion even if you yourself cannot type. It also seemed to help get more verbal comments and responses from the people who weren't typing. Usually in straight PowerPoint lectures, stereotypically if a lecturer asks a question to an Australian audience, none of the students want to speak first; I found that what happened was very quickly comments would start popping up on the lecture screen, and those would then break the ice and get a verbal discussion going too. (It alleviates the fear of speaking first, because usually the person who speaks first is an anonymous comment on the screen.)

All that's anecdotal, but I'm planning to analyse the stats after the second course has run with it.

I used to hand out large red and green cards, and get students to vote by holding them up while I pointed a webcam at them so they could see the result on the screen, but handing out the cards, collecting them up, and having to remind latecomers to class to pick up a card on the way in (and for an 8am engineering lecture there can be a lot of latecomers!) made the start and end of the lecture run less smoothly.

Re:I use teaching methods similar to Mazur's.

[AthanasiusKircher]

Thanks for the great summary.

In other words, many, many students are able to achieve a fairly high level of success on stereotyped mathematical textbook problems without understanding the meaning of a damn thing they're doing.

This is actually one of the most important points, and what's wrong with a lot of math and science teaching in secondary school and in colleges. At the primary level, it's okay to teach simple algorithms to do basic operations or just spit back information (although even there, it would be better if teachers were open to a deeper appreciation of the rationale behind the algorithms for solving problems).

But once you get to high school or college, you need to be tested primarily with problems unlike any you've ever seen before, if you expect to test true understanding. At a simple level, these can require basic comprehension skills, like the dreaded "word problems" that most secondary math teachers avoid. By the time you get a college level course, you should be prepared to be thrown all sorts of curve balls on problem sets and exams. Otherwise, math and any mathematical application classes (physics, other sciences, engineering) devolve into the equivalent of a poorly taught high school algebra class: identify the type of equation (hint, it's probably something you've learned about in the past couple weeks), then perform steps X, Y, and Z to find the solution for that problem type. No actual analysis or thought required.

Importance of reading and testing w/ theory

[erikwestlund]

They note the importance of reading before the class in the article but don't follow up much on that. This is crucial.

This problem presents itself when teaching interactively: If students don't prepare ahead of time, the lesson totally stalls. Then they are trying to figure out problems with no basis for it. What happens? The professor often ends up lecturing. Then no time is left.

My intuition (based upon TAing Statistics as a PhD student and being a high school teacher of history, philosophy, and information technology) is that very few students read before lecture. I often didn't as an undergrad. Why? Because as long as the lectures re-tread text material, student can get away with using the text only as a reference, not as a primarily source of information. If students are required to be active participants, they HAVE to read ahead of time. Otherwise they have no way of actually figuring out how to use the knowledge from the reading.

I agree with the poster who mentioned the importance of assessing theoretically. A lot of students think that theoretical assessment is easy -- they don't have to remember a lot and can just use their brain to figure out the test. At least in the Stats class I helped teach, this simply wasn't true. Whenever we had problems sets or exam problems which were more or less plug and chug, the students did GREAT. However, when we started asking theoretical questions (which statistical test is appropriate here? Why? How do you test assumptions...? Critique this statistically informed research piece.), students really struggled -- which means they don't get it. That tells me they weren't really ready to use statistics.

I bet this could have been alleviated significantly if we had spent more time in class really working through problems which asked tough theoretical questions in groups as a class. But alas, we lectured, then I had 50 minutes weekly to try to answer their questions -- never enough -- and the quality of work struggled. Many students never really seemed ready to work independently with the concepts: I think a big reason for this is they were taught by being talked at... so when it was time to show they knew stats, the brightest did fine but the majority freaked out.

Re:Importance of reading and testing w/ theory

[bussdriver]

The culture and system produces an environment that does not prepare students for such experiences; they learn how to hack the broken system they've learned to manage within doing as little as possible (which I would argue is human nature.) This is classic conditioning working against their and our best interests. Their brains are also not exercised in such areas so it makes it even more difficult-- the "smart" kid may simply be the one who's been able to ride their bike a lot while the rest never had enough time to get beyond the training wheels.

Rather than a fixed structure that is easy to learn to work around, we should have more diversity throughout development but instead we choose to promote wrote learning and teaching to tests which only take us further down this path. We use simplistic systems pitted against human brains where even a child can learn to outwit the mindless system (see multiple guess.) If you had human evaluations not tests you'd have one hell of a time as a student; with an underdeveloped skill level, pitted against an expert evaluating you.

I don't find there are "smart" students, merely those who didn't adapt as naturally to the broken environment and instead seem to seek out what isn't given and the ones who are predisposed in that subject or situation (which do no better when outside their comfort zone.) The normal students can learn and grow into better ones and the better ones can fall down into the normal patterns. "Smart" is largely who does well with the metrics used. An actual smart person is another whole topic. It is too easy to just give people IQs and shift the blame.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[CodeInspired]

Dude.. we get it. You don't value college education (except for those "Ivory" league doctors and lawyers and such). Some people do see value in it, otherwise they wouldn't bother putting the checkbox on the application.

Labs for the win

[Moof123]

I cautiously agree to reducing lectures. I found that in getting my BSEE I learned much more doing hands on labs in small groups than I did in the lectures for the class. Further, what I learned in labs and doing student jobs on various programs stuck much better than the lecture material, and cemented the lecture material better.

Sadly, lab are less and less hands on these days, and most new engineering grads have never held a soldering iron and had pathetically little hands on lab work. I would argue that having good well funded labs is more important than changing the style of lectures.

Lab reports, at least the ones I did, were also overrated. Shorter reports, and few of them would be preferred if it allowed more hands on lab work.

It was good enough for Hawking, Watson, Einstein..

[brillow]

While these were all smart people, and not average, my point is that while lectures maybe aren't the best for all disciplines, they are a proven method.

I think an unappreciated point is that with the increased societal goals of getting everyone into college, the average IQ of college graduates is steadily declining. Used to be, only very intelligent people went to college, now everyone is expected to go. Therefore teaching methods have to adapt to teach to lower and lower students. What I am unsure of in this article is if after these methods the students still have deep understanding, or are just better at answering questions they've already been asked before and been given the answers to in these discussions. Essentially it seems these discussion based methods are just out-sourcing the teaching to the students who do read the material.

I've heard someone say that intelligence means that someone is able to absorb and grok information in the form it is given. College education has been based loosely around this. There is some required reading, there is a lecture where you can ask questions, there are office hours/labs/recitations where you can ask more questions, then there is an exam. In this situation the burden is open the student to assess their own learning. Competent students can do this, and do. This new idea seems based around forcing students to think about the material and assess their own understanding through required discussion groups rather than learning to do this on their own. Consequently, I studied like a freak and spent a lot of introspective time asking myself if I understood this material.

In general I think the goal of the university should not be vocational. The goal is not to teach in such a strong way, but to merely make information available and have students learn how to learn. They've always done this with required readings, problem sets, etc. I'd be interested to see how many of these physics students who do so poorly actually do all their homework to the point in which they understand it. I had a labmate once (who was not cut out for physics) complain at how he did all the homework, but wasn't able to get the right answers. To me it seemed that he didn't really do it at all. (note: I am not a genius, but I am appropriately intelligent for college.)

What was once studying is now part of class time. When I was in school we worked in groups to independently form study/discussion groups, we didn't get our hands held by having teachers FORCE us to think about the material. This new method is interesting, but makes you think about what standards we expect of a college graduate. Does a degree mean that you know the material? Or should it mean that you have demonstrated the capability to learn the material? It would seem that in a job-environment they won't hold discussion groups to teach you how to do something, and a better skill would be to be able to learn on your own.

When I was in undergrad at the beginning of the past decade, the average grade in my physics class was a D, and this was normal. The average grade in organic chemistry was a C, and this was normal. The fact was that these were just very complex subjects and most people would not grasp all of it. The grades were adjusted upwards of course, but it was understood by the faculty that a course which covers the expected amount of material would be very difficult and the average student's raw score would be low, but that was ok.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[Lando]

One of the biggest problems I have found with students from India and China is not that they don't know their material. They have memorized what they were required to know and passed their tests, but the real problem I have found is that is all it is. Trying to understand something new is difficult, if it just involves memorization it seems to go fine, but coming up with their own concepts seems to be difficult. In computer science since most of what we do is not memorization, students have had a great deal of difficulty if they were in other engineering fields. Talking it over with my advisor, head of graduate studies in computer science, he agrees with me on the way things are done at least in india where he is from. Now, we still have issues in the US education system as well, not meaning to say that it's too much better here than there.

The issue is of course education systems that focus more on remembering facts rather than understanding facts and coming up with new concepts. Since I have a poor memory, I never could do well at memorization, but on the other hand, due to my problem, I became better at understanding the data rather than just remembering it so that on tests I could figure out what the answer should be.

Blah, I prefer teaching people to think rather than what to think.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[brillow]

More like hes forcing the students to do the things in class they used to be expected to do on their own. When I was in school I used to think about the material and assess my understanding on my own time, now its done in class.

It is a clever outsourcing job though. The students who read the material and are prepared will end up teaching the material to the rest of the discussion group. Slackers will be rewarded, and the students who spend a lot of time preparing for their lecture will not benefit with a higher grade!

no shit, teacher...

[hitmark]

This is the same issue across all age ranges. Larger classes results in less time for teacher student feedback. But thanks to never ending MBA/economist efficiency demands the classes grows larger and larger...

Nothing wrong with failing students

[brillow]

Why is it such a surprise that the average grade in a university physics class is a D?

If you took a random sampling of the population and tried to teach them a complex subject, do you expect that most of them would pass?

The fact that a lot of students fail, does not mean the teacher is bad. It could be so, but it could also be that the subject matter is difficult and most people are not smart enough to grasp it.

People fail classes. In fact, 50% of the students SHOULD fail (with modern grading paradigms).

Is the goal to have a university where everyone passes, or one where only the capable pass?

Re:Nothing wrong with failing students

[Moof123]

The goal should be that a high percentage learn the material. Folks that don't learn the material should get a failing grade, those that do should get a passing grade.

If a technique increases the number of people in a class that can learn the material, and increases the proficiency of those that would have learned it anyway this is a win/win.

So given that a pass should indicate that a student learned the material, yes it should be the goal of a university to have a high pass rate. We have advanced degrees and harder curricula for those that need softer classes to be able to pass (i.e. if an artsy type ends up in a hard physics class, the failure has already occurred elsewhere).

Physics/Music

[Anonymous Coward]

When composing music, there is no wrong answer. All music is equally good.
The same cannot be said for physics. It is quite possible to be very wrong in physics.

Re:Physics/Music

[Gravitron 5000]

If you want to sell your music, there is definitely a wrong answer. Heck, even if you just want people to listen to it, there is a wrong answer.

Re:This story is about Learner Centered Environmen

[stewardwildcat]

It is the work of Dr. Prather and his research group.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[williamhb]

Wait tell they figure out that they can get a guy in India to do the lecture on video for 1/2 the price. Then we will outsource the professors as well.

No, no -- when the professors figure out they can get good lecture videos for their classes for free, they won't bother each writing their own lecture slides on the same dang material. They'll be MCs and curators -- presenting others' material and spending more of the lecture time actually interacting with the class. And the world will be a much better place all round for it. (Lecturers are generally promoted for research not teaching, so the best way get them to improve their teaching is if it also saves them time.) Seriously, if you were an AI lecturer this year, would you spend another hour writing your own ten PowerPoint slides to give a basic introduction to particle filters, or would you just show your class Sebastian Thrun's videos about it from ai-class and then talk with them about it? The second option gets you a clear understandable explanation in much less preparation time, and moves your class onto more interesting more advanced discussion faster...

--
The Intelligent Book
Twitter: @wbillingsley

Well then I had a futuristic "instructor"

[Trax3001BBS]

He had been at with college for over 35 years and figured it out.

It was a community college, a computer repair course that
had evolved from learning assembly language and burning roms
to learning how to install windows 98, and networking, which was
just plug in two computers letting windows do all the work.

The teacher might of given five "lectures" the entire course of
two semesters not including the first day introduction. I even missed
one due to appointment made earlier, as there was no notice he would
even address the class.

Sitting in his office just off the computer lab the entire time we seriously
wanted something -it was supposed we were to teach each other, and did
as it couldn't be helped in a way. Three people tried to get their money
back but were refused.

A second class or path (industrial processes) we had a choice of taking
after completing the electronics course was taught each day and we were
very envious. Every day we showed up hoping something would be taught,
I'm serious.

One girl who I knew well graduated as being qualified in electronics and computer repair;
called me after college and asked how to install a video card. It was that class
that showed me that at a community college at least you buy a diploma.

Not sure what the article was getting at but (some) classes need to be lectured to,
maybe not all the time, but frequently.

I'm sorry but you are a dickhead

[Chicken_Kickers]

Yes. Since it is talk like an ignorant dick head today, I will honour the occasion and participate. You seem to be a double dumb ass for saying university education is a double dumb jackass waste of money. If you think it is a waste of money, then by all means, don't enrol and waste your money and go back to the jerk ocean where you came from. People on Slashdot are mostly in computer-related fields, a field whose pioneers notoriously start in garages. You could learn programming by yourself so fuck university right? Maybe it is true for your field, but not for others. Do you really want a "self-taught" engineer to construct a 3 km bridge across the strait? Or a "biochemistry-enthusiast" to formulate the medicine you take? You mention technical schools as the panacea, but you do realise there is a big difference between knowing how to do something well versus also knowing the underlying theory behind it? I can drive my car well but god-damn if I can fucking design a new car and build one from the ground up. I fucking need to go to university to learn all the engineering and other gosh-darn difficult words before I can do that. I hope you get what I'm trying to say. If not, maybe you need to go to a university?

Learning styles

[PPH]

Different people learn in different ways. Some are verbal (lectures), some are visual (textbooks), others learn best from tactile experiences. Reinforcing each of these are different applications of performing some task (homework) or discussion groups to rehash the learned knowledge. These are both learning techniques as well as a demonstration of the comprehension of the material.

It would probably be inadvisable to eliminate one avenue of learning that suits a significant group of students. On the other hand, the advent of recording and webcasting technologies can minimize the effort that faculty needs to make in support of lectures. So in the final analysis, getting rid of the lecture component of a class might be misguided.

The entire idea behind college needs updating

[koan]

Seriously why do I need a P.E. class? Why do I need to take certain art classes? I believe this was done to make a more rounded person but it has failed IMO.
If I can take a test and pass a statistics final then why on Earth do I need to sit in a class room for a semester? So the school can make money.

If we revised some of these items getting an education would be faster and focused on what is really required in the World, math, reading and comprehension, and critical thinking.

Most of us aren't out to be artist or musicians and if we were college would be the last place I would go for that knowledge.

If you are lecturing to more than 20-40 students..

[Gibgezr]

...you might as well be replaced by a video lecture. With that in mind, if you are paying big bucks to go to a school, you should not find yourself in classes of 200 people; if so, you might want to look around for a better school.

This Reminds Me Why I Preferred Seminars

[cmholm]

Your comment reminds me why I preferred seminar to lecture: we came to class to discuss the state of each student's paper, got an opportunity for feedback from instructor and peers, and got an extra dollop of subject expertise from the instructor.

Lecture gave me 'waaaaay too much leeway to how much material I elected to mentally engage with, or not, and too few opportunities to (literally and figuratively) test my comprehension, and address knowledge gaps.

That there is a weeding out process of freshmen is valid. The usual method of doing it (via lecture) is IMO hideously inefficient. Better to use methods like Mazur or @bcrowell to find who truly can't/won't learn the material, while giving the majority of students who are within the spectrum of those who can/will a better shot at becoming facile with it. As it is, we're obviously wasting a vast quality of mental potential and tuition dollars.

Re:Resource

[TaoPhoenix]

Gutenberg is the right idea, but it has a fatal flaw - the need to abide by the ridiculous copyright laws.

It basically has nothing written after 1920, which is when the Copyright gang has grudgingly admitted that prior works are public domain.

The problem is, there are some 100,000 important books (and millions of "fun" ones) that were written in the 20th century, but they're all locked down by Copyright.

My answer was just to buy stuff for a buck a book at sales, along with some specialized stuff at retail. It was a medium expense.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[msobkow]

Anyone who thinks a university degree is about getting a job needs to give their head a shake. For some careers it's a check mark on the start of a career, but that's because of the industry those students plan to work in, not an inherent benefit of the degree itself.

Getting a degree is about getting an education, no more, no less. It's about becoming a more well-rounded person.

If your goal is just to get a job, save your money and go to a tech school or a local college instead.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[rainmouse]

If Indian instructors are nearly as hard to understand at the tech phone supports I've had from "Bob" lately....well, it will surely degrade the already failing US education system. Hard to learn if you can't understand a damned thing the instructor is trying to say...

I'm going to have to strongly disagree with the stereotyping going on all over this topic, having recently experienced the reverse of this phenomenon. In my computer science degree we covered advanced AI + Intelligent systems in the second and final years and I found the local based lecturer difficult to understand. Not his accent I hasten to add, he spoke very clearly but he taught in an overly complicated manner. In the end I was saved from panic/ruin and ultimately failing the course when I found a massive set of free lectures on YouTube by some Indian professor who explained it really clearly in spite of his strong Indian accent.
I guess the Einstein quote rings true in my experience, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."

Interestingly the lecturer is part of some government funded Indian University that do free e-courses on a wide range of science + Engineering topics (all in English it seems) with all the lectures online and handouts / coursework up for free digital download. Not looked through the site in depth but seems to be genuinely free beer learning on degree level e-courses. Again I stress that I've not looked through the site in detail yet, but it seems like they take some of the strongest lecturers from Indian universities and basically record their lectures and upload all their hand outs etc.

Here's the address if anyone is interested: http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/

Please don't perpetuate stereotypes, yes sometimes they do hold some truth but that's no reason to write off so many other really cool things out there.

It is not so simple

[bussdriver]

A 4 year degree involves other topics traditionally and it is not just to employ the less important topics. Broadening student minds and trying to create actual intellectuals who were "well rounded" was the goal of many and for some it still is. Latin is pretty useless but the older schools required it of all students; not only as a filter but there was a traditional perception of that ability being part of being a smart educated man (not as bad as how women had to learn total BS at finishing schools.)

You could argue those traditional ideas were without merit and we should break from the past. I would not. I do not think an intellectual can be narrow in focus; different "modes" of thinking and kinds of intelligence overlap into topics where they are not well suited but can produce great results. NEW thought is quite rare and most papers written contain very little new conceptually; maybe some trivial stuff you can think of if you just put in a little time on the topic. Quite a bit of new innovative thinking involves thinking across disciplines AND CREATIVITY (aka right brain thinking.) Sadly, I cringe just using the word "innovative" or even "new" since those have lost most meaning today. Einstein played music, its possible he wouldn't have done what he did without exercising that half his brain (I'm not solely giving credit to that 1 activity but didn't just use 1 half his brain.)

Bio-mimicry is all the rage today but previously people were wasting time studying creatures at depth; it wasn't a waste in the end was it? Many pointless things turn out to have use or influence another area - its not merely mental exercise with benefits but the work itself often proves useful in unexpected ways later on. Back to bio-mimicry, we study nature/evolutionary solutions to problems and by adapting those solutions to new areas we "innovate" -- surely, you can see how a broad education or intellectual thought is a similar process?? can't you? (The creativity part is especially critical in finding bridges and cross application.)

Interactive lectures can not be compared to a video. Group dynamics differ so greatly and the combinations of factors are so great I won't believe much of anything claimed anymore than I think you can guess my 8 digit password (which is a much smaller domain.)

Costs issues:
Private schools are big business. The loan system is really really big business; larger than credit cards! Naturally the big corps lobby to raise costs so they can rape you further. People seem to forget is that public subsidy for public education has gone down by about HALF in a generation! Also, the few unions left have kept their people's pay from going down as much as other sectors - school operating cost is not really higher its that you are lower!! People bitch about the ones who jumped out of the pot instead of realizing that the pot is slowly boiling them! Then the fools vote to turn up the heat...it is so sad. Just like healthcare, a huge overhead is the funding scam but we can't talk about that instead we have to fight over smaller issues (some are not even issues.)

Re:What is the real motivation?

[Elaugaufein]

Considering that the main requirement for both of those jobs is an utter disregard for everyone else in pursuit of personal gain I'm pretty sure the thing you're looking for is Sociopathy 101. They don't usually offer that at Universities.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[Dabido]

You're being ripped off. We outsourced a $10 million project to India for $900,000. Admittedly it didn't work and came back all wrong, but after getting them to correct it and make it 'usable' it still came back at about $1 million total. Still, it was one tenth the cost for something which, though not as good a quality, still did the job it was intended to do. So, get an Indian guy at one tenth the price, or maybe one at one fifth the price to maintain the quality. :-)

Re:What is the real motivation?

[L4t3r4lu5]

Please don't perpetuate stereotypes, yes sometimes they do hold some truth but that's no reason to write off so many other really cool things out there.

You can pause and replay any point of a video that you don't understand. Try doing that four or five times during a live lecture, and see if some idiot doesn't accuse you of racism.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[lsatenstein]

Wait tell they figure out that they can get a guy in India to do the lecture on video for 1/2 the price. Then we will outsource the professors as well.

I was teaching ERP systems to career change people, and the best lectures were free and from India. They were very well done. I also learned things for myself.
I had the class watch them.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[lsatenstein]

If you leave the USA for an education, you will learn that people in other countries have at least 3 languages in which they are fluent. And that allows them to think "out of the constrained Single Language box". My multilingual students performed much much better than the uni-lingual ones I taught. And I have 3 languages under my belt, all three of which I work in daily.

Seems to me a market for an iPad app

[Colin Smith]

Which takes resources from places like Khan Academy, Gutenberg, Wiki books and turns it into a guided learning system from ABC through to degree level. With the emphasis being on what is this useful for.

Khan try to do this somewhat but their playlists are too broad and appear to be based on an entire (official?) syllabus.

Small group peer instruction is far too expensive for anyone except the wealthy to implement

Depends if you use official teachers. If you had for example an ipad app or perhaps social learning site, students could be required to mentor lower peers on subjects they had scored well on.

Re:Resource

[Colin Smith]

My library is now full and has been spilling over to other rooms for a while.
 

Re:What is the real motivation?

[cayenne8]

If you leave the USA for an education

And why exactly would I, or anyone in general in the US want/need to do this?

Re:What is the real motivation?

[Sarius64]

And some of those jobs pay really well. $50k for a job in Afghanistan and virtually no taxes is quite a huge chunk of change.

$24/hr and change is worth Afghanistan? You have lost your fucking mind.

Teaching IS Dead Meat

[glorybe]

Teachers are in for a hard ride. Parents also will be challenged. I have ranted at times about the nation having one eighth grade American history teacher who pipes the course to the entire nation. Most subjects can be easily taught that way. Then the next awakening is that if we only need a handful of teachers to cover the nation it follows that the learning machine-computer could as easily be at home as in an expensive brick building. That is when the strife really breaks out. We will be putting great pressure for families to have one parent at home, a stable home, with adequate income and children that are willing and eager to be educated. What will tend to follow is that any home that can not have a full time parent at home will be called a "bad" home and the pressure will be for the "bad" families to pay for facilities that resemble a traditional school situation whereas the more affluent neighborhoods will feel oppressed if they are forced to support the schooling of less fortunate people. This is a serious cultural issue. Currently we often offer the illusion of education which is not wise or fair but it is in line with the reality that most people will never be really employable as technology continuous to displace labor. There is a tendency to think of those that can not absorb technology as a lost group that will never be self supporting. Once that is in mind the idea of spending tax dollars to educate these folks appears to be completely wasteful of tax dollars.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[Creepy]

I noticed that with my roommate my first and second year in college and part of 3 (I dropped out for a bit to pursue a music career) - he had an Eidetic (photographic) memory, went to lectures and paged through the textbook and maintained a 4.0 GPA, while I studied for hours and hours to learn the material and was pushing a high B/low A at best. My teachers for my first 3 years of college were, incidentally, almost all Chinese or Indian and stressed rote memorization of formulas. The exception was the dean of the math department, an American I would describe more as a masochist than a teacher and an intro to computing teacher who was also American, but I should have tested out of that requirement because my knowledge was WAY past what that class covered (those first few college courses I really didn't know what to expect).

studying in USA is not for everyone

[batistuta]

I don't wanna get into a patriotic fight or compare political programs. I just want to point out that many countries (not USA of course) finance the education of its citizens. It might be good or bad education, don't know, but they do at least consider education to be an essential part of human rights. Some examples that I'm aware of are countries in South America (Argentina) and Europe (Germany, Spain, Netherlands). I'm sure there are many more around the world.

I know that in Germany for instance, until not long ago even foreigners could study for almost free. My understanding is that this has changed though, and now only EU residents have that privilege.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[datavirtue]

How about for free?

Good stuff for engineers:
http://www.youtube.com/user/nptelhrd#p/c/59E5B57A04EAE09C

Re:What is the real motivation?

[datavirtue]

that they don't know their material. They have memorized what they were required to know and passed their tests

Welcome to bureaucratic education. It is a machine that serves itself and requires a uniform procedure for everything so it can track what is going on. Everything become regimented so it can be filed and tracked. Long ago the filing and tracking became the priority. There is no mechanism that can instill understanding efficiently and still suck in a large amount of paying students.

Reforming this is a challenge. It will not be reformed on purpose.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[datavirtue]

Labeling a Porsche 911 Turbo as a car is deceptive. It is a race machine. A Honda Accord is a car.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[datavirtue]

Those lectures are awesome. There are many covering numerous engineering subjects.

Re:It was good enough for Hawking, Watson, Einstei

[bussdriver]

Boy have times changed. Everybody thinks of a CURVE even when they do not use a curve. If the average student gets a D then either its too hard or the prof sucks-- so then a curve is used to raise it up to compensate-- a few old ones adapted by using a curve but most just adapted their systems so it came out close to a curve. All courses are judged the same; its the prof's flaws that cause deviations from the bell curve and only a little slack is given for hard classes. There is no rigid system to enforce it but the perception exists and it has influence over the long term.

The culture has changed. not for the better in most cases; I'd assume this is yet another area of decline.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[cayenne8]

Labeling a Porsche 911 Turbo as a car is deceptive. It is a race machine.

Especially this one...It HAD been raced on the track...I have pictures of it with its numbers on the side...and with the rollbars in it.

The previous owner had had it tuned down a bit for street...but honestly, I don't think it still had a street legal compression or exhaust. Thankfully, I lived in states with no 'sniff' test.

Re:What is the real motivation?

[mcswell]

I suspect that memorization is a way of education in many places. I once taught introductory linguistics at a good university in Ecuador. One of the first assignments I gave was to show why an analysis in the book was wrong. I don't think they could quite believe the assignment at first, but it was a good introduction to what linguistics is supposed to be about--thinking, not memorizing.

Back in college, I got high As in organic chemistry and quantitative analysis (chemistry). In both classes, I was able to reason through most of the material starting from fundamentals, hence very little memorization. Then I met biochemistry. It was a grad/ undergrad class, meaning everyone gets an A or a B; a C is like flunking. I barely squeaked by with a low B. The reason is that, as far as I could tell, there were no fundamental principles; most everything was memorization, like the Krebbs Cycle. I'm sure there *are* principles, but either I didn't catch them, or they're too difficult to reason through. Protein folding would probably be an example of something that proceeds from principles, but the principles are effectively too complex for people to reason through. (This was in the early 70s, and I don't think much work had been done on protein folding.)

Moral of the story: There are things that one uses reasoning with, and there are others where reasoning doesn't get you far. I much prefer the former sorts of subjects. (There may be subjects where reasoning works, but it's beyond the capacity of the human brain--the aforementioned protein folding, for instance.)

I have to agree

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Listening to a professor drone on and on is not learning, is sheer boredom. While there are some professors that are skilled lecturers and are interesting to watch, for the most part most professors create a lecture plan and then follow it for decades and it is apparent with their complete lack of enthusiasm.

The problem is, most university level professors could not be classified as "teachers". Most are unwilling to spend the level of time and commitment suggested by the article and would prefer to stand up in a lecture hall and remain relatively detached from their "students" and let those students figure it out on their own. Student interaction is what the teacher's aids are for.

I agree a new paradigm is necessary for education in general, more hands on and less regurgitation of facts is a benefit to all, I just don't see many professors with decades of tenure wanting to change the system so hopefully this will apply to a new generation of professors that are starting their careers.