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Vermont Medical School Says Goodbye To Lectures (npr.org)
The University of Vermont's Larner College of Medicine has begun phasing out lectures in favor of what's known as "active learning" and plans to be done with lectures altogether by 2019. NPR spoke with William Jeffries, a dean at the school who's leading the effort, about the thinking behind this move. From the report: Why are lectures bad? Well, I wouldn't say that they're bad. The issue is that there is a lot of evidence that lectures are not the best way to accumulate the skills needed to become a scientist or a physician. We've seen much evidence in the literature, accumulated in the last decade, that shows that when you do a comparison between lectures and other methods of learning -- typically called "active learning" methods -- that lectures are not as efficient or not as successful in allowing students to accumulate knowledge in the same amount of time.
Give us an example of a topic taught in a traditional lecture versus an "active learning" setting. A good example would be the teaching of what we would call pharmacokinetics -- the science of drug delivery. So, how does a drug get to the target organ or targeted receptor? A lot of the science of pharmacokinetics is simply mathematical equations. If you have a lecture, it's simply presenting those equations and maybe giving examples of how they work. In an active learning setting, you expect the students to learn about the equations before they get there. And when you get into the classroom setting, the students work in groups solving pharmacokinetic problems. Cases are presented where the patient gets a drug in a certain dose at a certain time, and you're looking at the action of that over time and the concentration of the drug in the blood. So, those are the types of things where you're expecting the student to know the knowledge in order to use the knowledge. And then they don't forget it.
Give us an example of a topic taught in a traditional lecture versus an "active learning" setting. A good example would be the teaching of what we would call pharmacokinetics -- the science of drug delivery. So, how does a drug get to the target organ or targeted receptor? A lot of the science of pharmacokinetics is simply mathematical equations. If you have a lecture, it's simply presenting those equations and maybe giving examples of how they work. In an active learning setting, you expect the students to learn about the equations before they get there. And when you get into the classroom setting, the students work in groups solving pharmacokinetic problems. Cases are presented where the patient gets a drug in a certain dose at a certain time, and you're looking at the action of that over time and the concentration of the drug in the blood. So, those are the types of things where you're expecting the student to know the knowledge in order to use the knowledge. And then they don't forget it.
True, different people learn differently. But another big variable is what the topic is. If it's a problem solving course (math, physics, CS, many parts of engineering) the "work stuff out" active learning is more likely to work well. If it's more "absorbing information" (say, anatomy, some chunks of o-chem or biology), then the gains aren't as large.
We're replacing our lower level physics lectures because of this, and doing our best to measure the effects. The upper level physics courses, it turns out, were always more like the new model, if for no other reason than the classes have always been very small and it simply works better for everyone to be working things out rather than the prof talking to a few students.
The best teaching technique I've ever seen was that practiced by the Bible Study Fellowship back in the 1980s. All the material was broken down into 1-week chunks. You started with reading assignments and an outline that you did on your own. This was followed by a weekly small-group discussion where the group collectively answered a series of questions on the same material. This was followed by a lecture of the whole fellowship. The lecture was now very interesting, because you had personally worked through the material, worked with others to process it and cover the bits you didn't get on your own, and now you had some appreciation of what you were dealing with.
I adopted that pattern for every course I've ever had to teach, and the retention is phenomenal, 90% and higher.
My opinion is it worked so well because:
- Same material, multiple processing methods (reading, writing, talking, listening)
- Same material, multiple repetitions
- Your FIRST introduction to the material is personal. That increases "ownership".
- Questions answered BY a small group invite collaboration and sharing
There you have it.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Specifically, we tried to get colleges and universities to adopt new methods of andragogy in addition to lecture.
The reason is that for most students lecture isn't very effective. Their retention drops of rapidly as the lecture gets longer, to the point where when you are approaching the 1 hour mark almost nobody is retaining anything being said. Basically long lectures are a huge waste of a lot of people's time.
It's also important to understand that students are different from each other in their learning strengths and weaknesses. I, for example, can sit in a lecture hall for hours on end and remember almost everything. I'm an oddball. People like me have traditionally been seen as "bright", but life experience has taught me that I'm not *that* much smarter than most of the people around me. What I and people like me am are, is unusually good at retaining lecture material. That's a massive advantage in a lecture-based educational system.
Don't get me wrong. Being an information sponge is a tremendous asset in real life. But I think academia over-selects for people like me, and makes people who don't happen to have this peculiar talent work harder for the same results.
But a more diverse way of teaching would also benefit oddballs like me. When people talk about "learning styles" they usually mean "I shouldn't be forced to learn in ways that are hard for me." Actually, you should be challenged to learn in ways that don't come naturally to you, just not 100% of the time. It's important to become a versatile learner, able to adapt to the situation. Playing to your strength all the time is limiting.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
So in other words, they have no solution to accelerate the initial process of learning the material, so they just shovel that responsibility entirely onto the student.
Learning is, and always has been, entirely the student's responsibility: a professor cannot learn the material for you! The responsibility of a university is to provide the best possible environment and resources to enable and encourage students to learn as well as to assess what they have learnt.
The idea with these techniques is that students learn the simple concepts by themselves because they can and this allows instructors to spend their time teaching the harder concepts which students need help understanding. The other benefit is that these techniques force students into thinking about concepts they may find very challenging whereas in a lecture format students can "write-off" challenging topics as too hard by tuning out and just accept they will take a hit on exams for these topics.
That's the theory. Where we have to be careful is that a lot (but not all) of these new techniques are also far less "dense" i.e. you end up spending a lot more time on each topic so you cover less. Even a traditional lecture format should show an improvement in understanding if you go through things more slowly and demand less of students. So while I think that these techniques are better when adapting courses you have to be careful not to also dumb-down the course by removing material.
"The medium that best suits a person's ability to learn varies a lot from person to person."
This sounds like it's true, but it is actually highly controversial among learning scientists. There is very good evidence that people have well-established ways they prefer to learn ("learning styles"). The idea that teaching should be customized to match students' learning styles was originally promoted by a company that made money selling learning styles tests to schools. It turns out it is very difficult to prove if it works or not. And it's very expensive to implement.
In educational experiments, alternative teaching methods nearly always work better than lecturing. I'm not aware of any evidence that replacing lectures with a thoughtfully-designed alternative has ever harmed a student's learning. It is common that students complain they have to work more when lectures are gone - but the extra work is the cause of the extra learning.
Simon's Rock College
It is false. There are no learning styles. There are abilities, and lack of them. Education comes from person to person way easier than from video to person and from text to person. You need to pass not only facts (which do not exist on its own , strictly speaking ) but also values of the discipline that you are teaching. What is important and what is less importance and why so. That forms a basis to build on.
Now pick random people that have read some texts, make them to do group work : where they are to learn the values from? Nowhere, they will have a random forests of facts in their heads, with no hierarchy or structure. Go play Jeopardy.
I think the larger trend is that lectures are moving to video, and class time is thereby freed up for Q&A (both directions, so some "Socratic" from the professor), discussion, and various other interactive things. The best part about video is that if you can follow it at 1.0x speed you can probably follow it at 1.6x speed, and when you can't follow it there is the rewind button.
Ther's a middle ground though. When they say "no lectures", it implies no discussions, no intro material, etc.
No, it really doesn't. "Active Learning" tends to mean that you studies the material beforehand (read the book, watched an online lecture, whatever) and then in class you discuss, practice, ask questions about whatever you didn't quite understand, etc.
The goal is that the intro material is absorbed by the student without a teacher present. Then the class is the discussion. So you have the teacher for the parts where having a thinking human is useful, and for the parts where in the past a human would blather at you, have Youtube blather at you instead.
Considering the size of some endowments it seems like universities are being somewhat selective about which costs matter. Administrators are getting bigger and bigger raises and bonuses, while full professors get replaced by adjuncts who make less than the minimum wage. So those lectures with 150 students are given by someone with little experience and who doesn't even get basic benefits like health care or a sick day, while administrators are being given seven figure salaries.
A smaller and smaller percentage of the money in higher education is actually being spent on educating students, but the football coach is the highest-paid public employee in the state.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'd go even further. What passes for science in pedagogy is complete flim-flam. Education departments are packed with mediocrity, yet they are taking a bigger and bigger share of the focus in teaching basic sciences in higher education.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Administrators are getting bigger and bigger raises and bonuses, while full professors get replaced by adjuncts who make less than the minimum wage. So those lectures with 150 students are given by someone with little experience and who doesn't even get basic benefits like health care or a sick day, while administrators are being given seven figure salaries.
A smaller and smaller percentage of the money in higher education is actually being spent on educating students, but the football coach is the highest-paid public employee in the state.
As cynical as that sounds, it is absolutely correct. Having spent over 30 years in the arena, the takeover of universities by management is nothing short of shocking.
There are now more people shuffling papers around and pulling down 6 figure salaries keeping track of 5 thousand dollars worth of pencils than there are academics.
And if you want to know why college is so much more expensive now, they'll tell you they would have to hire 50 new accountants, 30 middle managers, 2 staff assistants, and have a building built to house them.
Then a year later, they'll release a report saying that the University needs to hire more accountants and managers.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It is all about having a business plan that actually works.
I hate to tell you, but your business plan that actually works is falling apart. I'm not certain if you've noticed or not, but outside of a very few disciplines, young people are graduating with a mountain of debt, and with precious little prospects. For many schools, the football attendance is down, and then there is the actuarial tables. A lot of wealthy alumni give a lot of money to the schools. But they are dying off.
Now we are looking at those young folks I told you about before. That guy with the philosophy major, or the woman with a gender studies degree. And a hundred K of debt. Working min wage at McD's.
There is a math problem there. Having spent three decades in the system, you can see it coming
Because this smart business you talk about has missed out on one thing. Teaching people.
Of course some wag will come on and note that University isn't there to enable people to have careers. Well then, looks like that kinda kills the business model. When the business is centered around pecuniary extraction while offering nothing but giving people cool buildings and football, it isn't sustainable.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Abandoning lectures is stupid.
Lectures aren't to "teach" you how to do something, they are to explain what it is you are about to learn, provide the context, provide a process map to that learning.
The ACTUAL learning is done by you, at your desk, alone or with a group of people. and even then the actual learning comes right down to YOU performing the task, not just hanging out with others who are performing the task.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
A few years ago, the University of Illinois at Chicago spent $1.5 million to renovate the chancellor's residence, which had been completely renovated 3 years before. She had a round-the-clock campus security detail assigned to her in the safest neighborhood in the city and a town car and driver on call. I know all this because we lived across the alley. It was five blocks from campus.
I'm out of the game now, but my wife is still an active math professor, so I get to see first-hand what's going on. Higher education is eating itself, and they wonder why they're being challenged by online diploma mills.
You are welcome on my lawn.