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'The Traditional Lecture Is Dead' (wired.com)
Rhett Allain, an Associate Professor of Physics at Southeastern Louisiana University, writing for Wired: What is the traditional lecture? It is a model of learning in which a teacher possesses the knowledge on a given topic and disseminates it to students. This model dates to the beginning of education, when it was the only way of sharing information. In fact, you occasionally still see the person presenting the lecture called a reader, because way back before the internet and even the printing press, a teacher would literally read from a book so students could copy it all down. Now, don't get me wrong. The traditional lecture model worked wonderfully for eons. But it is an outdated idea (free pass for adblockers). Close your eyes and imagine yourself in a college physics course with a professor giving a traditional lecture. Now open your eyes. Did you envision The Best Physics Lecture EVAR? I doubt it. You probably pictured someone droning on and on in front of a chalkboard or PowerPoint presentation. No way that is more engaging or interesting than an episode of The Mechanical Universe , and if you're a teacher who uses traditional lectures, just stop and play the show instead. Everyone will be better off. You may think by now that I think most physics professors are dolts. I promise that's not the case. But traditional lectures simply aren't effective. Research shows students don't learn by hearing or seeing, they learn by doing, a model often called active learning. Physics faculty should start thinking about how they can go beyond just a traditional lecture. There are some easy things they can do (or students can ask them to do) to make learning more engaging. First, make students read the book outside of class, rather than in class. If your lecture merely covers the material in the textbook, why make students buy the textbook? Now, you may put a different spin on the material, but still. You're merely repeating what students can read on their own. Let them do that on their own time, and use the classroom for experiments and demonstrations and so forth.
Who is to say that because this method of education has been used for eons it is not longer valid? Why? In fact, I'd argue completely the opposite: it has survived numerous challenges. Maybe it is as good as it gets and the problem is that education reaches a broader audience that does not interact well with learning. Proof: Trump got elected even though it is going to crap on all the people who voted for him and that was widely known... But... when you have a population that is 50% stupid (being generous here) then you get what you get.
But traditional lectures simply aren't effective. Research shows students don't learn by hearing or seeing,
Speak for yourself, a good lecture reduces the time to learn for many. For me, I figure at least 2x. The interactions rapidly clarify areas of confusion.
A great lecture inspires.
Wrong.
Beyond Wrong.
"The Mechanical Universe", what the fuck I don't even.
Fuck off with your hipster pseudo-intellectualism. Here is a lecture on hydrostatic pressure by Walter Lewin. It is more interesting, more entertaining, and more educational than ANY of your pop-science crap. I don't care what privatised iCloud lecture service you are trying to hock, or your bullshit smear stories against Lewin either. The traditional lecture format is better than anything you can come up with with your cheap credit funding and fly by night websites and social media scam promotions.
Get the fuck out of of my fields. Get the fuck out of my hobbies. Get the fuck off the internet you anti-intellectual Hipster frauds!
Because the textbook is supposed to have much more detail than what the teacher can provide.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
The article (almost in full in the summary above) is making the argument against lectures that a lecture would just be repeating what the student has read on his own in the textbook.
Well, repetition is not necessarily bad. Facts stick if we can apply them, if we can associate them in new ways. A good lecturer does not simply repeat exactly what you read. If you are a good lecturer then you emphasize those things in the subject matter that are the most important and you do that from a slightly different angle than in the textbook. And you do use pictures, drawings, animations or other appropriate media that are not in the textbook - just as you would when making an educational video.
And if you hold a lecture then you should always devote a few minutes to questions. Getting a question cleared up can be all the difference for someone.
If you think lecturing is droning on then you are just a lazy professor.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
This type of response is why education in the US is off the rails. You extrapolate your response to learning via YouTube to the entire student population. Students learn differently. Some respond to visual learning methods. Some to auditory methods. Some respond best to experiment. The point being, instructor input is vital. During a lecture, the instructor can see the "deer in the headlights" look, and adjust the instruction style and content appropriately. Videos can't do that. Self-study only works with brilliant, entirely self-motivated individuals, and those are rare indeed.
Research shows students don't learn by hearing or seeing, they learn by doing, a model often called active learning.
We called it homework.
If your lecture merely covers the material in the textbook, why make students buy the textbook?
That's why I never did.
You're merely repeating what students can read on their own. Let them do that on their own time, and use the classroom for experiments and demonstrations and so forth.
They're called "labs". Learning from reading a textbook alone is hard. It requires discipline, focus, and hard work. If it were easy, we'd have no need for University courses. That's why we have professors who go over it in class, so you can ask questions and have the obscure parts explained to you, and the students who lack the drive to study the book on their own time (most of them) can still learn the material.
In my experience, students mostly prefer the reverse: learn the material in class, apply the material in homework after class.
Learning a new subject is hard work. Classes are there to make the work less hard. Seeing movies and experiments isn't making it less hard, it's just entertainment.
Speaking as a physics professor who has tried many of these new techniques - I've done video lectures which are up on YouTube, in-class tutorials, clickers etc. - I get really annoyed by this type of hyperbolic promotions of them. Technology has indeed given us some better ways of doing things and in that the OP is right that we should explore and use them. However, somethings are best taught in the more traditional lecture format and frankly, when I was a student myself we were all supposed to read around the subject - not just limited to reading the textbook but other books too - as well as attend the lecture so this is hardly a "new idea".
In particular one of the things I have noticed with many of these new techniques is that they communicate far less information and those using them often have to take material out of a syllabus. They then compare this to the original lecture and it is no surprise that they find that students learn the material better. However if the original lecture format was repeated with the same reduced syllabus and far more time on each topic I expect that this too would get better results if for no other reason than students have less to revise for the exam.
So please let's not start the irresponsible hype that old lectures are dead just because we have an arsenal of new techniques. Some of these techniques may have disadvantages over the "old" lecture style particularly when it comes to the amount of material covered which, for a subject like physics, is extremely important because it has a more linear nature until you get to the final undergrad year. Plus some of the new techniques are grossly unfair since they award marks for a group and not individuals which means it can be heavily influenced by how lucky you are with your group members.
Exactly wrong. Live lectures can be quite good or very bad. Recorded live lectures (or recorded anything else) are always bad. People often love the videos, but research shows that even if you enjoy the video it's more likely to reinforce your erroneous preconceptions rather than teach you something new.
Lectures are a compromise between efficiency of delivery and optimum knowledge transfer. They're not the best at either, but they seem to achieve an optimum tradeoff.
> use the classroom for experiments and demonstrations and so forth
When I was in school, no teacher or professor merely read from the book. The syllabus would contain what was going to be gone over in class, you were expected to read it before you showed up. Of course, not everyone did that, but the instructor would at least try by telling you and having it written down, as well as posting what problem sets were due and so on.
The lecture period would cover the high points of the text, but it was interactive in that the students could ask for clarification and have the professor work though things on the board. In certain classes there would be a demonstration of principles (if they applied), but not every class had the opportunity for this, such as writing classes. We also had lab sections when applicable for chemistry, physics, biology and so on, where we would learn by doing. I guess the lecture period was for reinforcement of the textbook plus an open forum for asking clarifying questions. Of course, if you were really still in the dark you could always go to office hours.
This was 30ish years ago ... so by the definition of this article I didn't see a "traditional lecture" in the entire time I was being educated. My kids are still in grade school, but they have a very different school day than I ever did, and very much removed from what this guy is railing against.
Given the example of The Mechanical Universe, having a professor show up and play a video every week would make me angry. Why shell out thousands of dollars to have some PhD hit play on a video? Why not engage them at a human level that's been going on since the Greeks were having dialogs ages ago?
Pretty hard to get many professors to change their ways otherwise.
That's cute. You think tenured professors do most of the teaching.
And of course we all know that means he isn't dead at all.
I have to roll my eyes at this sort of nonsense. The traditional lecture will never go away, although one might hope that lecturers who are crap at it will be more motivated to find alternatives, leaving the good ones to do their thing. [just] "putting a different spin" on the material is often *exactly* what a student needs. I vividly recall an interaction I had with a bunch of extremely intelligent Chinese profs, and I mention the nationality only because the language barrier was relevant. I was trying to explain a certain process, and it took me over a day, drawing and re-drawing and re-wording and re-re-wording until I finally hit on the "spin" that made the connection with one guy, and he explained it to the rest (in Chinese) and we were able to move in. Much the same sort of thing often happens in a lecture setting.
"Traditional" boring droning lectures which re-read the book or the powerpoint slides may be dead, but then they were never alive.
I've dumped network news for Internet news simply because I can get my news five-ten times faster. Likewise, all those science shows on television are unwatchable because of all the filler material. The medium that gives the most information in the least time should always be the winner, but that might depend on the student.
If the lecturers you've experienced are like watching TV of ANY kind, then they were doing it wrong. Proper lecturing is an interactive experience, wherein not only do the students ask the lecturer questions, the lecturer also asks the students questions, promotes discussions, and encourages paths of thought and ideas not covered in the lecturer's notes, nor in the textbook. A good lecturer also paraphrases the book, draws analogies, and in general provides as many ways as possible for students to have access to the course material in a way that they will 'get' and understand.
Concluding that lectures as a whole are ineffective or outdated, without taking into account the quality of the presenter, is kind of like concluding that movies aren't worth watching when all you've seen are Golden Turkey award winners.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
>"...a teacher would literally read from a book so students could copy it all down...You probably pictured someone droning on and on in front of a chalkboard or PowerPoint presentation. No way that is more engaging or interesting than..."
When I taught college classes (part-time) I certainly didn't stand there and drone on for students to copy down notes. Neither did many of MY teachers. That is why they have textbooks and handouts. I was there to INTERACT with the students. I asked and answered questions, made them think, created teams for focused discussion or debate, played "what if" games, had people come up and offer ideas. THAT should be the modern teaching method- interaction. So you certainly should lump all "modern teaching" with standing at a board and droning on and on.
Now I will say one reason I stopped teaching was when the dean gave me a set of pre-made handouts and tests and told me they wanted everyone to teach by using/reading slideshows. I promptly told him "You don't need an instructor experienced in the subject matter/field to teach that way- most students won't learn and I am not needed" and they pushed the issue and I resigned at the end of the semester.
A good lecture isn't about taking notes down by dictation, or by copying them verbatim from a blackboard.
The notion that if its in the books we can just read it on our own is idiotic... the minute we have a question we have to stop... continuing further just leaves us confused. Reading the book as prep for the lecture is good. Reading the book afterward as review, and for study and reference is great. But if you think a lecture is just the professor reading the book, then you've missed the point of lectures completely.
There's a few dimensions to this that are important.
First, not everyone is a verbal learner. Some pick up concepts much easier from reading than listening. Sometimes a book diagram can enlighten much better than any hand-drawn diagram on a chalkboard; of course, the professor has the upside of of being able to adapt the drawing based on questions. So really, the two go hand-in-hand. I've actually always felt the opposite of you: the lecture gets me excited about things I should pay attention to, but I don't really understand it until I read the book and do some problems. Your line about getting confused is exactly me in lecture; if I have a question about the lecture but the professor moves on (which often the professor has thought he answered my question, and maybe even I did too), then the rest of the lecture can leave me a bit confused until I read the book later. It's a style difference I think, not making judgments because I don't think either way is "better".
Second, I suspect it depends a bit on the topic. It's difficult to understand a mathematical proof in a textbook for the first time simply by reading (often you need an expert to walk you through it), but there are other subjects that are well-suited to simply reading.
Third, we must separate the ideal from reality. A good lecture will inspire and be very dynamic based on questions and feedback from the students. However, I had several professors at my alma mater Big State University that would walk into class and flat out tell the students "I didn't want to teach this class, I'd rather being doing research, but the chair said I had to". As you can imagine, some professors look at lecture as something you just get through... and yes, they tend to regurgitate textbooks. Even when the professors care, if they wrote the textbook, they're a little partial to that style of presentation obviously and so will mirror much of the material in the book.
So much information is online now (or in books) that it does seem easiest to read books or watch videos outside of class, then use your class time with the expert in the field (the professor) to clarify questions. It's good to have someone walk you through the problems until you get it. Lectures - in video or book format - don't usually do that, instead leaving examples to the reader, which is what really misses the point.
Remote courses were going to replace classwork. Doing was going to replace learning. Write less, do more was going to solve everything
Stop deluding yourself. Monkeys are smarter than us. We are social learners who learn by: reading, hearing and doing. Different people do it differently but we all stand on the shoulders of giants.
It is STUPID to state everyone learns physics by doing. Having actually TAUGHT physics, I can tell you have had to demonstrate for some, explain for others and write on the board for yet others.
Everyone's mode of learning is equally valid. And for some, the traditional lecture is just fine.
And such a system is bound to produce worthless degrees. You must ask a lot of your students and then fail all those that cannot even produce a reasonable approximation to the level of understanding and insight you require. That way you make sure only those that have it pass, and that the degree means something. Memorizing some facts is part of the deal, bit it should never be enough to pass on its own.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Nope. The ideal solution is to encourage teachers/professors to specialize in teaching to a specific mode of learning, and encourage students to pick the teachers that best suit their preferred learning styles. In an ideal world, machine learning could be used to pair up students and teachers in optimal ways based on similarity to other students that did well in that teacher's class previously. For that matter, in an ideal world, there would be entire schools that focused on learning in a particular style. (Technically, these do exist, to some degree, but not to the extent that they should.)
You could do that, but it won't help much at all. A video lesson is still fundamentally a lecture. Students that learn better by hearing and seeing will do well with any well-crafted lecture, but students that learn better by doing won't.
Ask yourself why you will spend eighty hours messing around with something before even considering calling up tech support, and you should understand why that approach won't work. :-D
But in all seriousness, there are a number of reasons why that approach can't work as effectively as a classroom:
In short, your approach would likely improve rote memorization, but would significantly shortchange other important parts of the education process. I'm not only unconvinced that it would be effective, but I'm also convinced that the resulting social isolation would cause serious harm. It is far better to have different tracks geared for people with different learning styles, with some randomness so the population of learners isn't entirely homogeneous, but with
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I don't want to watch damn videos! Speaking is an incredibly slow way to transfer information. I can read at least an order of magnitude faster than you can talk.
If you're going to have videos, then you also need to provide written material covering the same topics.
I have spent the last couple of years building flipped curricula for undergraduate chemistry courses. It's had positive results, and I plan to keep developing it, but there are a lot of caveats.
No, you can not just tell your students to read the textbook outside of class, only about 10% of them will actually do it and you will spend your in-class time recapitulating the all concepts to them anyway.
True, you might have more success with upper levels or with something like a literature course. And you can get better results if you quiz them at the start of class, but that's a bit backwards, given your assumption was they would not understand the material until working problems with you, and takes up valuable class time. Requiring them to outline the chapters is a decent strategy except that it's hard to grade, is a lot of work for the students, and still leaves behind those who have the most trouble grasping overall concepts.
The difficulty with teaching inexperienced students is that they don't have any idea what the essential concepts are or why they are important. Textbooks are excellent references, but if they're heavy enough that you can use them as a weapon, then they contain far too much information for your average student to be able to recognize the salient points and how they fit together, at least until they've already been through the course. That is the purpose of lecture, which is basically rounding up all your students by the campfire and telling them a story that they will understand and remember so that they have a way to interpret all the detail in the textbook. For most of our history spoken story is how humans have learned and things like gesticulation and inflection are surprisingly important in creating a sensible emphasis.
In my courses I have ultimately chosen to produce online lectures delivered via a Moodle setup loaded with H5P. I am able to require my students to watch the lectures before class (for a grade) as well as embed interactive questions. Besides keeping my students from nodding off while watching, the questions force them to immediately interpret what they've seen and review the video if they have not understood important aspects. I include worked solutions so that they can do self-assessment on if they have made any errors. When they come to class they work much more complex problems which tie the concepts together. (Anecdotally, I can say this has been fairly effective in that my students seem to require much less "babying" than they used to and usually have more substantial questions to ask during the groupwork).
But it's taken a tremendous amount of time to put together -- I estimate about 5 hours to produce every 15 minutes of video. I am fortunate to be a fulltime lecturer; I don't see how I could have done it with research alongside. Nor could I have done it in my first years of teaching without having first accumulated some traditional teaching experience.
There is also the downside that offering this much help in solving problems can in some ways limit student's ability to develop independent skills. I could assign homework as well, but in this setup they are already assigned to watch videos and at some point you start being abusive of their time. The honest truth is no teaching method exists which can let every student fully retain the contains of a 15 hour course schedule and still live normal happy lives.
But, as helpful as I think guided learning can be, in my opinion part of our goal in college is to teach students to be capable of independent learning. My favorite courses that I have taken myself were not flipped -- they were skilled lecturers who assigned demanding homework problems (probably too long to be done in class anyway). If I needed help I could ask the professors questions during their office hours. This seemed to work well for my peers as well. But we were juniors and seniors at that point knew the ropes, had developed our o
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
There comes a point where learning-by-doing runs into some serious obstacles - maybe just fine for newtonian physics but a hands on quantum mechanics demo might take a lot of setup. When I was a student there were labs for the stuff that could be set up in a reasonable time, lectures need not be tethered to what the school has equipment or time to do.
As someone else points out, the lecturer is key to the whole thing, Feynman sure had it down to an art, if ever there was a good argument to try to get into a top flight university it's the existence of teachers of that calibre
Nullius in verba
Here's a rebuttal from a former lecturer: your point is stupid.
I'm well pissed innit and not a lecturer any more, so I really can't be arsed to say more.
Cheers! :)
Ps don't drink and reply, it's a bloody terrible idea
SJW n. One who posts facts.