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There is an alternative method of teaching, but I suspect most people like it less than the traditional lecture. In law school, teachers employ the "Socratic Method" of teaching. It can be quite nerve-racking for someone who isn't used to it. Essentially, the teacher assigns reading pages to the class. Students than attend and the teacher questions students at random about the reading they have done and its implications. No student knows when they will be called on. Students who don't do their reading can be shamed in front of the entire class when they are unable to respond.
All in all, it can be a rough, but effective way to teach. I've seen teachers who offer a modified version of this. Sometimes they just throw questions out to the entire class and wait for a volunteer to answer. Sometimes, some of the material is presented by lecture with follow up questions.
Most people who have encountered the traditional Socratic Method find it both stimulating, but frightening. You can look awfully bad in front of a group of people if you either don't do your homework, or even if you have, but you don't really understand the material.
I would be hung out to dry if I used the socratic method the way they do in law school. We are not allowed to embarrass students. Apparently, it's ok if they don't do their homework and don't pay attention.
You completely missed the point. You can headsmack all you'd like but YOU are the one who said that "not" lecturing was . There are many different ways to learn. YOU see lecturing as the superior way because it works better for YOU. You feel you had to work hard and that listening to lectures was part and parcel to that. I only pointed out that saying those who prefer to gleen their information from reading could equally say the same - that depending on lectures is perhaps "catgering to their inability to read...are we really just enabling them to continue not working on reading comprehension and retention".
It doesn't matter if your reading issue is physical (although, perhaps less headsmacking would help. Good golly....). It doesn't take away from the fact that there are different ways to absorb information. Some people excel at certain ways more than others. It doesn't necessarily mean that doing it a different way is coddling or enabling students (the thought of which seems to occupy a good amount of your life). And that is true for both reading and lecturing. Students should be able to do both to some degree in order to be successful.
Like it or not, you WILL be expected to listen and pay attention in the real world. I had to sit through twice daily staff meetings and hand off meetings during my time as an engineer. The hand off meetings could be hours long (staff meetings usually concluded in about 45 minutes). Being able to pay attention and retain what you hear are necessary skills and holding students accountable for information learned in lecture goes a long way towards developing them. Yes there are different ways to learn but your employer isn't going to be offering them. He's going to hire people who can learn the way he presents information. Either you learn to work around your issues or you're out on the street because your competition can do it.
I don't know about your college classes but mine required both reading and listening to lectures. You weren't likely to pass if you couldn't do either one. The material we were assigned to read wasn't covered in the lectures and the material in the lectures wasn't in the reading. The lecture built off of the reading. I don't get why you think expecting students to pay attention during a lecture means teachers are not also requiring students to read. Please find ONE post where I advocated a lecture only format. I didn't. You made ASSumptioins you shouldn't have. What I am advocating is expecting students to put in the effort to pay attention during lectures. I do not consider that too much to expect of students.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 05-18-2014 at 10:39 AM..
Interesting implications for the trend towards online courses. These courses have a strong tendency to demonstrate the worst of lecturing... one way recorded interaction with no variation and no engagement (because, well, they are recorded).
Tell me about it. I took my first online class this past semester and I hated it. I get so much out of the class discussion. While we had online discussions they weren't really discussions as there were requirements to refer back to the lecture or reading so what people did was look for a post where they could do that rather than having a genuine conversation about the material. It was just so much ticket punching to get my grade. For me it was a real struggle because of the amount of reading as well. Seriously, I'm capable of reading on my own. Why I had to pay $2200 for the class is beyond me. They could have just required me to read the book.
I hope I never have to take another online class. They suck. I would much rather be in a classroom where I can ask questions and interact with my classmates.
Interesting implications for the trend towards online courses. These courses have a strong tendency to demonstrate the worst of lecturing... one way recorded interaction with no variation and no engagement (because, well, they are recorded).
Some online courses do offer live lectures using some kind of chat or conferencing software. The students get to type questions and answers in the chat box or use a microphone. But, what I like about online classes is that I can skip the recorded lectures if I want to. I also have the options of rewinding when I miss something, watching the lecture as many times as I want, and just replaying the sections I need for an assignment.
Even when online classes don't have recorded or live lectures, they usually have discussion boards. In my online masters program, I interacted much more with my classmates in discussion boards than I do now actually being in a classroom with my fellow PhD students. Even though the communications were asynchronous, we had many interesting debates. Discussion board assignments force everyone to participate while many people can get away with saying nothing during a lecture. When they do participate in a lecture, they are usually talking to the professor and class in general. They rarely directly respond to other students.
I would be hung out to dry if I used the socratic method the way they do in law school. We are not allowed to embarrass students. Apparently, it's ok if they don't do their homework and don't pay attention.
I think the humiliation is optional.
I do something like this in my classes.... I have a book with everyone's names in it and when they participate I give them a check. If they don't have a check, I'm probably going to call on them.
They don't question it because they know I'm only asking equal amounts of participation from everyone, and there are many ways to participate or get checks... like say, if they improve their score on quiz or something. I don't embarrass them and I give hints or get someone to help them if they're stuck, but they are going to participate.
Of course, this wouldn't work so well in a lecture hall.
I find it amazing that humans were able to accomplish so much in the first few millennia of our history with only reading and lectures as the primary instructional methods.
On a personal note, I love lectures. I would like to attend more of them for entertainment, but the area where I live has few evening lectures open to the public.
I find it amazing that humans were able to accomplish so much in the first few millennia of our history with only reading and lectures as the primary instructional methods.
On a personal note, I love lectures. I would like to attend more of them for entertainment, but the area where I live has few evening lectures open to the public.
This is why I think we're enabling people by making it the teacher's job to engage them rather than the student's job to pay attention. People have learned by listening for thousands of years (and when you consider how few people could read, most probably learned by listening). Why are we insisting on changing things now? What changed?
For thousands of years, history was handed down by word of mouth. If people couldn't pay attention and retain what they heard it would have been lost. I think we're just kowtowing to laziness.
Interesting implications for the trend towards online courses. These courses have a strong tendency to demonstrate the worst of lecturing... one way recorded interaction with no variation and no engagement (because, well, they are recorded).
The ones I took weren't lectures. They were textual. For certain classes, on-line would be the way to go -- I think at least 2 years of college and in many cases 4 years could be done on-line and be much more affordable. Video conferencing with an interesting lecturer could replace expensive professors -- thousands could share a good professor -- and that could bring the costs way down.
Some classes with labs -- like quantitative analysis would not be as suitable to being put on-line.
Education is one area that hasn't kept up with technology. Many business meetings are now on-line. Why are universities stuck in the 1950's mode?
I do something like this in my classes.... I have a book with everyone's names in it and when they participate I give them a check. If they don't have a check, I'm probably going to call on them.
They don't question it because they know I'm only asking equal amounts of participation from everyone, and there are many ways to participate or get checks... like say, if they improve their score on quiz or something. I don't embarrass them and I give hints or get someone to help them if they're stuck, but they are going to participate.
Of course, this wouldn't work so well in a lecture hall.
I can't do that because some students feel embarrassed if they don't know the answer and I can't risk embarrassing a student. I wish I could. I have a few who need to be embarrassed. They need something to motivate them to pay attention. I just gave a test to 70 students where I have a 78 average in spite of 5 scores below 30%. Seriously? I cannot open their heads and pour in the knowledge. They have to do something. Teaching is like pushing a rope. If the other person doesn't pick up their end and pull the rope goes nowhere.
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Good golly....). It doesn't take away from the fact that there are different ways to absorb information. Some people excel at certain ways more than others. It doesn't necessarily mean that doing it a different way is coddling or enabling students (the thought of which seems to occupy a good amount of your life). And that is true for both reading and lecturing. Students should be able to do both to some degree in order to be successful.
Please find ONE post where I advocated a lecture only format. I didn't. You made ASSumptioins you shouldn't have. What I am advocating is expecting students to put in the effort to pay attention during lectures. I do not consider that too much to expect of students.
