Kill the Classroom Lecture!
Jun 4th, 2009 by Bryan
(not a Furman student)
I was listening to This Week in Tech 197 this morning, and one of Leo’s guests was Don Tapscott, author of Growing Up Digital (1996), Grown Up Digital (2008) and Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (2006.) There is a great conversation in the last third of the show about how education must be transformed in light of the technological age.
Around minutes 57-58, Tapscott made the point that innovative professors must get out of “the transmission of data business.” Here is the quote that grabbed me:
Lecture is the process by which the notes of the professor go to the notes of the student without going through the brains of either.
I have taught classes ranging from 8 to 100 students, with all freshmen, all seniors, and mixed ages. Based on exams, papers, evaluations, and talking with former students, I have a very strong sense that the time that I have spent lecturing is largely wasted. Only a few students would come out and say
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that to me, and most of them don’t even realize it. I tend to get compliments on my lecture style, and honestly I think I’m good at it.However, as I get ready to start a new semester this fall, with two new courses and in a brand new university calendar and curriculum, I am committed to eliminating lecture completely from my teaching.
Our new calendar is the standard two-semester+May model. Courses meet twice or three times per week, with either 75 or 50 minutes for each session, respectively. Our old calendar was the (unusual for higher ed) regime of 5-day-per-week courses, with twelve week terms in fall and spring and an 8 week term in the winter. My classes now will have 42 contact hours with me instead of 56 hours.
I have to be as efficient as possible under the new calendar, and a big part of that is not doing in class what can be accomplished by students in their reading or outside assignments. I definitely don’t have time to “transmit data” to them, even if it means that I have to spend time creating more supplemental readings, and charts, etc.
What will I replace lecture with? Discussion mostly, both in whole-class and small-group varieties. There are also some interesting engaged-learning exercises and games that I want to try out. Whatever the case, my teaching goal will be to use class time to help students synthesize and contextualize data, and to develop proficiency in articulating and defending their own arguments.
Let me finish this by saying that I was a student who loved lecture courses. Like most PhD types I have an analytical disposition, and being rather introverted, I didn’t want to talk in class and I didn’t care much what my fellow students were thinking. Professors are sometimes guilty of teaching pretty much the way that they enjoyed learning, and I have done some of that in my time.
However, I have to remember that I was a kid back then. It would have been good for me to be more engaged in class, and I remember fondly those professors who drew me out of my shell. So, while I can sympathize with the proclivities of the “quiet student,” I must still require them to shake loose their barnacles and get involved in the class.
After a year out of the classroom, I’m very excited to get back in the fray.
I like this idea. I think the hardest part is getting students to understand and articulate what they are learning in non-lecture courses. I’m teaching a new class in the spring, and plan on involving a lot of reflective writing to help aid this, since my subject matter will be largely hands-on and unique to each student’s learning.
I’m podcasting *all* my lectures in Intro to OT and in Hebrew in 2009-2010. Prep will keep me busy this summer, but I’ll thank myself when I’ve got those additional hours for interactive session time.
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I was (and am) really interested in this post because I am presently working on a specialized teaching practicum as part of my M.Div degree. While I aspire to earning a Ph.D. and teaching at the collegiate level, I have to get my teaching fix by teaching adult Bible classes at church. I have (and continue) to run into the problem of the powers that be wanting me not to “lecture” (and I am not sure I know what they mean by that word). I loved Tapscott’s quote above! My wife is an educator and she has been working on me for two years now to be more educationally sound in my teaching. I think we have come a long way (with still a long way to go).
I was hoping that whatever you were implementing this coming school year would be something that I could incorporate into my practicum, but alas, I think not. I can hardly get the people in class to read the Bible from week to week. There is no way I could encourage them to read portions of Klyne Snodgrass’ Stories with Intent (I have been assigned the topic of parables). How else can I provide new data that would help scaffold the class to a level of discussion that would not otherwise occur if we were simply to-in my classic phrase-”share our ignorance?” This is the problem that I am running into. As it is, I am limiting my lecture time to 25 minutes, according to Eric Jensen’s recommendation for adults in Brain-Based Learning. I am going to incorporate small group activities following (or preceding?) the lecture, but I don’t know how to get around spending some time communicating new data. I am using the Beyond Bullet Points method of PowerPoint, which I hope will make my lecture as brain compatible as possible. But sometimes I wonder if the churches I am working with actually want this to be a class (which to my youthful ears implies *new* learning), or if they just want to fellowship and “share their ignorance.” They love the seminary where I attend and support it financially (many members are graduates), but I wonder sometimes if they are (even inadvertently) attempting to hermetically seal their theology from the academics of the institution. If you have any thoughts, I have an ear.
I really like reflective writing as a way to engage students with the subject matter. The downside is that it can be time intensive for the professor if you work with them to improve their writing. This kind of critical reflection doesn’t come naturally to many students.
I am also going to record some audio podcasts and screen captures to make up for some lecture material. For information that has to come from me, a podcast is better than live delivery because students can review it at their leisure.
How else can I provide new data that would help scaffold the class to a level of discussion that would not otherwise occur if we were simply to-in my classic phrase-”share our ignorance?”
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You have identified the most difficult problem in this approach, especially in a setting where you have little power to require outside work. I face this problem in classes all the time. If students have not done the preparation work, there is precious little that can be done in class except for me giving them a canned version of what they should have gotten themselves before then. The difference is that I can give them hefty participation grades as motivation.
It seems to me that with a subject like the Parables, you should be able to find discussion topics and break-out exercises that will engage the class in a positive way without you having to lecture. Academic analysis of parables is interesting and important, but you may find that the class isn’t ready to go all the way there. You can try to help them address key issues and questions in a more inductive way through conversation, even if you can’t go all the way to where your seminary class would go.
The hardest thing for professors about discussion-based engaged teaching is that you have to surrender control of student learning. They must be responsible for their own learning, and you are trying to create the conditions for that to happen. This is especially true (and perhaps the way it should be) in a classroom setting.
Our church has some Sunday School classes for adults that are fellowship oriented and some that are teaching oriented. Mine is the most content-rich offering, and tends to attract people who want that sort of thing. If we had a wider mix of people who wanted serious learning and those who didn’t, teaching would be very difficult. I don’t envy your position. Perhaps a frank conversation with the minister(s) might help. At least they should know that you are aware of the challenges and are trying to do the class well, with participant’s needs in mind.
Thanks for the comment, Joseph, and let me know how things develop. I have a strong passion for religious education, and much respect for those who are working toward it.