15 ms·

The Case Against Lectures

74 points by dnetesn 9y ago

Simulacra 9y ago
Project-based learning, or designed thinking, doesn’t just help students “get” the material in time for a good grade on the test; it also helps deepen their appreciation for what they learn. The article is a little slanted, IMO, towards tech understanding. My husband studied polysci. There are not many projects, and hands-on methods for getting all of that, and I would say that for MOST degrees. Tech, on the other hand, totally hands on, project based for me.
- didgeoridoo 9y ago
  The humanities have been doing “project-based” learning for a while: essays. Sure, you’re playing with ideas rather than code, and it’s hard to tell if your analysis of Rawlsian vs. Nozickian ethics “compiles”, but I’d consider it project-based learning nonetheless.
  - rockostrich 9y ago
    The problem with the comparison is there's no feedback loop with "project-based" learning unless you can discuss the subjects in a classroom setting or have 1-on-1 review of what you're writing. A compiler tells you if you're wrong right away and you can get started on the next feedback cycle immediately. You know if what you're learning is the working.
hprotagonist 9y ago
The best way i know of to learn is this: you, me, a chalkboard, and about three hours of arguing in front of it. this approach doesn’t scale, though.
- MaysonL 9y ago
  Bloom's Two-Sigma strikes again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_Sigma_Problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_Sigma_Problem
- practice9 9y ago
  Yeah, the "master & his student" approach is unparalleled in terms of effectiveness.
  - komali2 9y ago
    The only problem is I can think of many specific times in my life where another student asked a question, and I had the thought, "Fuck, that's a good question, I didn't even think of that," and I learn down a path that I had simply applied false assumptions to without realizing it.
  - truculation 9y ago
    Actually I think more effective is the 'new student and the student-who-recently-completed the course' because the old student remembers his misconceptions. Whereas the professor suffers from the curse of knowledge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge
- neuxenian 9y ago
  I'd add a computer of some sort to that, probably a laptop but basically I agree 100% As a professor, I can say most professors don't like lecturing, but for some classes the alternative is to have small interactive classes, which isn't financially tenable for most universities for all classes. So my reaction to these sorts of studies is "ok, then should we increase tuition to make up for splitting this 200-person class into 20 sections?" Even classes of 20 are too big. I would like to change something about classes that still have a big lecture component but I'm not sure how to do that optimally. I think some of them could be done in an online format with videos, but I'm not sure if that's the best way either. Maybe if some small group discussions could be added?
- sh33mp 9y ago
  To this day, I'm still trying to understand why my freshman calculus class (proof-based), was as effective as it was. It was 30 students, 1 lecturer, and a whole bunch of black board panels. I think part of it was that it felt like a conversation, as well as a game. He would lay out the pieces (assumptions, definitions), and then point us in some direction ("now how would we show X?") We'd throw out ideas if we had any, and he'd either rebut us or nudge us in the right direction. I was 100% engaged in that class - no checking of phones or surfing the net - and it was just myself and my notebook, unlike in other classes that were slides-based and I picked up the bad habit of zoning out when something familiar was being covered. You can't do that in a conversation! The material and strategies I learned in that class completely built the foundation for my math major. I am still not sure if math is one of the few topics you can take this approach for, slides are the devil, or if the lecturer was just secretly brilliant.
  - Jtsummers 9y ago
    I started reading How to Solve It by Polya (as one of my interests is education, particularly math education). Your professor's technique sounds like something straight from this book. Present a problem, ask the students for the next step. Guide them towards the solution (reference similar problems, maybe be explicit if they're way off). By engaging them in a dialogue you keep them engaged and focused on the material (or at least more of them than in a straight "speak at them" lecture). And by giving them a chance to answer for themselves, you're encouraging them to think (rather than merely commit things to memory or similar).
jpizza 9y ago
As someone with a degree in chemistry and now attempting to self-learn CS, I have found working through detailed books and problems the best way to learn. If only I would have known this simple fact in my chemistry lectures instead of trying to look through the book for what the teacher would test on. Yes I tested well but my understanding of the full concepts is not as expected.
- bo1024 9y ago
  A person who has gone through a degree (of any kind, especially technical) is in a much better position to self-learn just from working through books and problems. What works for you now with your knowledge and experience might not have worked for you as a freshman or sophomore.
- commandlinefan 9y ago
  > I have found working through detailed books and problems the best way to learn That's been my experience, too. What I can't seem to reconcile is that it appears that very, very few people actually seem to do this, yet there are a lot of people succeeding in CS. So either they're all a lot smarter than I am since I have to spend so much time reading before I really feel comfortable with a particular topic, or they're all just fooling themselves and they don't really understand it that well.
chasedehan 9y ago
The science really is accurate with regards to the lecture being outdated and not effective. However, problems abound with regards to implementing different methods in higher ed. For example, I was previously a Financial Economics Professor and "flipped" the classroom for my introductory corporate finance class. This means that the students watched prerecorded video lectures at home and then worked out their "homework" in class. So basically, the students had someone (me) to ask questions of when they hit stumbling blocks. Pedagogically, this has shown improvements in learning achievements. HOWEVER, the problem I ran into is pretty similar to what I have heard from every other faculty member (across disciplines and universities) who has attempted to do this. The problem is that we repeatedly hear from students that "he didn't even teach us anything, he just made us watch videos." This wasn't just one or two students, this was an overwhelming majority. The other problem I ran into was that students thought there was no benefit to coming to class (even when you include attendance as part of their grades). The number of students dropping the course at the last 'W' deadline skyrocketed. For me, it became a challenge to continue to do it this way, even though I spent 3+ months full time over a summer producing videos of my lectures, and eventually went back to the "chalk and talk". My student opinion polls went back up. I'm not entirely sure of what the solution to the problem is, but project based learning does greatly enhance learning. That needs to be baked into the institution.
- pradn 9y ago
  Students seem to equate being personable, nice, witty, and entertaining with good teaching. Perhaps the word "teaching" necessarily conjures up lecturing. Much of the work on producing learning outcomes is in picking the textbook/materials, finding the pace, creating the evaluation/feedback mechanisms (tests/quizzes/informal methods), and designing the projects. These factors aren't included in what students perceive as "teaching".
- sykh 9y ago
  I’ve been doing flipped classrooms for nine years now. I teach mathematics at a community college. What I’ve found so that students drop out much sooner in my flipped classroom style versus traditional lecture style class. But the overall rate hasn’t changed. Students can’t fake it in my flipped classroom style. If they come unprepared, and this is obvious when it happens, I don’t help them doing the problem sets in class. I only help the students who are prepared. The lectures they are supposed to watch have been created by me. I create my own content. The slackers die off quickly in my format. This makes for a much better end of semester for me and the remaining students. There is no cure for apathy. If they don’t want to work they won’t. They’ll blame whatever they can regardless of format. I do wonder how success is measured in the article. Is it passing rate? That’s easy to increase. Has the material been mastered better in alternative format classes? That should be the real test of success. To date I’ve never encountered an institution that measures success correctly.
truculation 9y ago
A problem I found with lectures was the dilemma: shall I write notes or try to follow the argument? (I couldn't manage both.) There was another dilemma: am I here to be inspired or to find out what's going to be in the exam? (The most inspiring lecturers couldn't care less about exams.)
- kkylin 9y ago
  The thing I've found most effective (but hard to do in practice because it takes time): take very minimal notes, just during lecture / seminar, just enough to remind yourself afterwards what it was about. Try to write more detailed notes afterwards and make all the logical connections the lecturer skipped (there are always some, you can't say everything in 50 or 75 minutes). Then, if there are holes, try to fill them by reading or asking. But that does take a lot of discipline and effort. It's not easy to do for every class you're taking, but sometimes worthwhile.
  - sp332 9y ago
    In one of my classes - run by the head of the math department - two students were assigned each day to take notes, "so the rest of the class can pay attention". He would collect the notes and send copies to the rest of the class later. The tests were based on material in the notes.
ericHosick 9y ago
We used an approach called student centered learning at the University I lectured at. Basically, students sit in groups and work with each other and the lecturer acts as an enabler (this is actually harder than just lecturing for 1+ hours). But considering we retain 90% of what we teach, I decided to have a team of students give a lecture. For QA, the team would come into my office and give me their lecture along with student centered learning tasks they created. They then lectured in the class. Other students were a lot more attentive and ask a lot more questions. The students who lectured really knew the material. In some cases, students would come to my office and ask if they could give another lecture. Later, I found out, a few students liked lecturing so much that they became teachers.
- copperx 9y ago
  > a few students liked lecturing so much that they became teachers. That's hilarious. Do you count that as a success or a failure of student-centered learning?
Jtsummers 9y ago
Question: When I was an undergrad, almost all the science and engineering courses involved lectures (to convey information), recitations (to review with a TA), and usually a lab (sometimes the same as recitations, to practice material). Every time I see people saying lectures are outdated, I cannot think of an actual STEM course where I was just lectured to outside of one Calculus course (for whatever reason we didn't have recitations for that one, and the professor was the sort to write and erase at the same time). Is the problem with courses that are too dependent on lectures (as the predominant or majority time of faculty/student interaction) or is it actually that lectures are ineffective? Even my later CS and math courses that were too small to have a TA had very interactive "lectures" even if we didn't code or do exercises during them (very Q&A oriented). Perhaps this is also a difference between different schools and the faculty at them? EDIT: Reading more of the comments here I'm realizing that I only had a couple classes that were "traditional" lecture-oriented courses with the instructor speaking at us for the hour. The vast majority weren't and I think that's part of my confusion with the anti-lecture movement that's happening. I consider a lecture to be a dialog (because that's most of what I experienced) and not a monologue. I would agree that monologue lectures are boring and dreadful if that's the majority of what you encounter in a class or school. Now I'm wondering what schools did that. I went to several universities (spanning the gamut from lower tier-2 to top of the country) and only at the top school (GA Tech) did I experience a traditional lecture, and only for a couple courses.
gen220 9y ago
This comment thread echoes experience. I'm a soon-to-graduate CS student at an institution with an unspendably-large (in the billions) endowment, and yet the environments in which I've learned the most at this school, are those in which either (1) other students have been given the task of teaching me something or (2) vice versa. Notice the absence of traditional "classroom settings". Many of my fellow students feel the most lectures we've attended felt futile. It's not that we haven't learned anything from them (quite the opposite), it's just that it doesn't feel like the most efficient way to transfer knowledge, given 3 hours and an assembly of Smart People. Think – in what other time and place will you be able to assemble 30+ great minds, interested in a specific topic, and one of those minds is (hopefully) an expert in that topic? It feels like a waste, to assemble this magnitude of excellence and diversity, just for 1 person to speak for 3 hours. Obviously, the extreme alternative of chaotic 1-on-1 discussions between isolated friend groups would also be a waste – but it feels like there ought to be some goldilocks middle ground. The lecture environment's shortcomings are mitigated by a highly-engaged and question-happy audience, but large lecture halls/class sizes, and strict curriculum requirements dis-incentivize (1) paying attention enough to ask good questions and (2) answering good questions with detailed and fascinating tangents. A classmate recently shared this < https://www.recurse.com/ https://www.recurse.com/ > and it continues to strike me as an enlightened approach to CS education, as it directly leverages the imperfectly-overlapping distributions of knowledge of the "students" to further collective education – an idea which makes perfect sense, especially at the graduate or nearing-end-of-undergraduate levels. Perhaps we'd be better off running college as a continuous, 4-year Hackathon? :)
biotech 9y ago
There is plenty of research that supports alternative teaching methods. The problem is, success in these research studies does not always generalize well to classrooms around the world. There are a few reasons for this, I think. - When these methodologies are applied at the college or graduate school level, you have a bunch of students who are experienced and skilled at learning in the traditional lecture format. Changing that up in the final years of their educational career is not always going to be successful. - Anecdotally, many teachers report that less motivated students may fall way behind in alternative teaching methods. - Not all teachers are adept at teaching using alternative or "flipped classroom" methodologies. - When students have a bad teacher, the consequences of that are much much worse in flipped classroom than they are in standard lecture format. A bad lecturer will usually still get a certain amount of information across, but a bad flipped classroom facilitator can result in an entire class learning essentially nothing from a course. So there is significant risk to implementing alternative classroom methodologies.
dorfsmay 9y ago
I'm surprised the article nor the comments here mention Harvard professor Eric Mazur and his "evidence-based, interactive teaching" Peer Instruction method. This video is a bit long, but goes into details of his scientific approach to measuring results in the context of learning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwslBPj8GgI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwslBPj8GgI For more details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_instruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_instruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Mazur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Mazur
bo1024 9y ago
It's an interesting topic but this article didn't help me learn much about 'the case against lectures'. Of course there is no one-size-fits-all teaching method. So the questions are when to use which. My hypothesis is that lectures are better for students who are well-prepared and well-motivated. If they want to learn the material and have the background, then give them the material efficiently. But for younger students with broader backgrounds, lectures aren't as effective. However, it's easier said than done putting something else in their place.
woodandsteel 9y ago
As a former university teacher of public speaking, let me say that a large part of the problem is that most lectures are just poor in various ways. A really good lecture will capture your interest and get the information into your brain in a way that will make it stick.
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74 points by dnetesn 9y ago

Project-based learning, or designed thinking, doesn’t just help students “get” the material in time for a good grade on the test; it also helps deepen their appreciation for what they learn. The article is a little slanted, IMO, towards tech understanding. My husband studied polysci. There are not many projects, and hands-on methods for getting all of that, and I would say that for MOST degrees. Tech, on the other hand, totally hands on, project based for me.

didgeoridoo 9y ago
The humanities have been doing “project-based” learning for a while: essays. Sure, you’re playing with ideas rather than code, and it’s hard to tell if your analysis of Rawlsian vs. Nozickian ethics “compiles”, but I’d consider it project-based learning nonetheless.
- rockostrich 9y ago
  The problem with the comparison is there's no feedback loop with "project-based" learning unless you can discuss the subjects in a classroom setting or have 1-on-1 review of what you're writing. A compiler tells you if you're wrong right away and you can get started on the next feedback cycle immediately. You know if what you're learning is the working.

hprotagonist 9y ago

The best way i know of to learn is this: you, me, a chalkboard, and about three hours of arguing in front of it. this approach doesn’t scale, though.

MaysonL 9y ago
Bloom's Two-Sigma strikes again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_Sigma_Problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_Sigma_Problem
practice9 9y ago
Yeah, the "master & his student" approach is unparalleled in terms of effectiveness.
- komali2 9y ago
  The only problem is I can think of many specific times in my life where another student asked a question, and I had the thought, "Fuck, that's a good question, I didn't even think of that," and I learn down a path that I had simply applied false assumptions to without realizing it.
- truculation 9y ago
  Actually I think more effective is the 'new student and the student-who-recently-completed the course' because the old student remembers his misconceptions. Whereas the professor suffers from the curse of knowledge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge
neuxenian 9y ago
I'd add a computer of some sort to that, probably a laptop but basically I agree 100% As a professor, I can say most professors don't like lecturing, but for some classes the alternative is to have small interactive classes, which isn't financially tenable for most universities for all classes. So my reaction to these sorts of studies is "ok, then should we increase tuition to make up for splitting this 200-person class into 20 sections?" Even classes of 20 are too big. I would like to change something about classes that still have a big lecture component but I'm not sure how to do that optimally. I think some of them could be done in an online format with videos, but I'm not sure if that's the best way either. Maybe if some small group discussions could be added?
sh33mp 9y ago
To this day, I'm still trying to understand why my freshman calculus class (proof-based), was as effective as it was. It was 30 students, 1 lecturer, and a whole bunch of black board panels. I think part of it was that it felt like a conversation, as well as a game. He would lay out the pieces (assumptions, definitions), and then point us in some direction ("now how would we show X?") We'd throw out ideas if we had any, and he'd either rebut us or nudge us in the right direction. I was 100% engaged in that class - no checking of phones or surfing the net - and it was just myself and my notebook, unlike in other classes that were slides-based and I picked up the bad habit of zoning out when something familiar was being covered. You can't do that in a conversation! The material and strategies I learned in that class completely built the foundation for my math major. I am still not sure if math is one of the few topics you can take this approach for, slides are the devil, or if the lecturer was just secretly brilliant.
- Jtsummers 9y ago
  I started reading How to Solve It by Polya (as one of my interests is education, particularly math education). Your professor's technique sounds like something straight from this book. Present a problem, ask the students for the next step. Guide them towards the solution (reference similar problems, maybe be explicit if they're way off). By engaging them in a dialogue you keep them engaged and focused on the material (or at least more of them than in a straight "speak at them" lecture). And by giving them a chance to answer for themselves, you're encouraging them to think (rather than merely commit things to memory or similar).

jpizza 9y ago

As someone with a degree in chemistry and now attempting to self-learn CS, I have found working through detailed books and problems the best way to learn. If only I would have known this simple fact in my chemistry lectures instead of trying to look through the book for what the teacher would test on. Yes I tested well but my understanding of the full concepts is not as expected.

bo1024 9y ago
A person who has gone through a degree (of any kind, especially technical) is in a much better position to self-learn just from working through books and problems. What works for you now with your knowledge and experience might not have worked for you as a freshman or sophomore.
commandlinefan 9y ago
> I have found working through detailed books and problems the best way to learn That's been my experience, too. What I can't seem to reconcile is that it appears that very, very few people actually seem to do this, yet there are a lot of people succeeding in CS. So either they're all a lot smarter than I am since I have to spend so much time reading before I really feel comfortable with a particular topic, or they're all just fooling themselves and they don't really understand it that well.

chasedehan 9y ago

The science really is accurate with regards to the lecture being outdated and not effective. However, problems abound with regards to implementing different methods in higher ed. For example, I was previously a Financial Economics Professor and "flipped" the classroom for my introductory corporate finance class. This means that the students watched prerecorded video lectures at home and then worked out their "homework" in class. So basically, the students had someone (me) to ask questions of when they hit stumbling blocks. Pedagogically, this has shown improvements in learning achievements. HOWEVER, the problem I ran into is pretty similar to what I have heard from every other faculty member (across disciplines and universities) who has attempted to do this. The problem is that we repeatedly hear from students that "he didn't even teach us anything, he just made us watch videos." This wasn't just one or two students, this was an overwhelming majority. The other problem I ran into was that students thought there was no benefit to coming to class (even when you include attendance as part of their grades). The number of students dropping the course at the last 'W' deadline skyrocketed. For me, it became a challenge to continue to do it this way, even though I spent 3+ months full time over a summer producing videos of my lectures, and eventually went back to the "chalk and talk". My student opinion polls went back up. I'm not entirely sure of what the solution to the problem is, but project based learning does greatly enhance learning. That needs to be baked into the institution.

pradn 9y ago
Students seem to equate being personable, nice, witty, and entertaining with good teaching. Perhaps the word "teaching" necessarily conjures up lecturing. Much of the work on producing learning outcomes is in picking the textbook/materials, finding the pace, creating the evaluation/feedback mechanisms (tests/quizzes/informal methods), and designing the projects. These factors aren't included in what students perceive as "teaching".
sykh 9y ago
I’ve been doing flipped classrooms for nine years now. I teach mathematics at a community college. What I’ve found so that students drop out much sooner in my flipped classroom style versus traditional lecture style class. But the overall rate hasn’t changed. Students can’t fake it in my flipped classroom style. If they come unprepared, and this is obvious when it happens, I don’t help them doing the problem sets in class. I only help the students who are prepared. The lectures they are supposed to watch have been created by me. I create my own content. The slackers die off quickly in my format. This makes for a much better end of semester for me and the remaining students. There is no cure for apathy. If they don’t want to work they won’t. They’ll blame whatever they can regardless of format. I do wonder how success is measured in the article. Is it passing rate? That’s easy to increase. Has the material been mastered better in alternative format classes? That should be the real test of success. To date I’ve never encountered an institution that measures success correctly.

truculation 9y ago

A problem I found with lectures was the dilemma: shall I write notes or try to follow the argument? (I couldn't manage both.) There was another dilemma: am I here to be inspired or to find out what's going to be in the exam? (The most inspiring lecturers couldn't care less about exams.)

kkylin 9y ago
The thing I've found most effective (but hard to do in practice because it takes time): take very minimal notes, just during lecture / seminar, just enough to remind yourself afterwards what it was about. Try to write more detailed notes afterwards and make all the logical connections the lecturer skipped (there are always some, you can't say everything in 50 or 75 minutes). Then, if there are holes, try to fill them by reading or asking. But that does take a lot of discipline and effort. It's not easy to do for every class you're taking, but sometimes worthwhile.
- sp332 9y ago
  In one of my classes - run by the head of the math department - two students were assigned each day to take notes, "so the rest of the class can pay attention". He would collect the notes and send copies to the rest of the class later. The tests were based on material in the notes.

ericHosick 9y ago

We used an approach called student centered learning at the University I lectured at. Basically, students sit in groups and work with each other and the lecturer acts as an enabler (this is actually harder than just lecturing for 1+ hours). But considering we retain 90% of what we teach, I decided to have a team of students give a lecture. For QA, the team would come into my office and give me their lecture along with student centered learning tasks they created. They then lectured in the class. Other students were a lot more attentive and ask a lot more questions. The students who lectured really knew the material. In some cases, students would come to my office and ask if they could give another lecture. Later, I found out, a few students liked lecturing so much that they became teachers.

copperx 9y ago
> a few students liked lecturing so much that they became teachers. That's hilarious. Do you count that as a success or a failure of student-centered learning?

Jtsummers 9y ago

Question: When I was an undergrad, almost all the science and engineering courses involved lectures (to convey information), recitations (to review with a TA), and usually a lab (sometimes the same as recitations, to practice material). Every time I see people saying lectures are outdated, I cannot think of an actual STEM course where I was just lectured to outside of one Calculus course (for whatever reason we didn't have recitations for that one, and the professor was the sort to write and erase at the same time). Is the problem with courses that are too dependent on lectures (as the predominant or majority time of faculty/student interaction) or is it actually that lectures are ineffective? Even my later CS and math courses that were too small to have a TA had very interactive "lectures" even if we didn't code or do exercises during them (very Q&A oriented). Perhaps this is also a difference between different schools and the faculty at them? EDIT: Reading more of the comments here I'm realizing that I only had a couple classes that were "traditional" lecture-oriented courses with the instructor speaking at us for the hour. The vast majority weren't and I think that's part of my confusion with the anti-lecture movement that's happening. I consider a lecture to be a dialog (because that's most of what I experienced) and not a monologue. I would agree that monologue lectures are boring and dreadful if that's the majority of what you encounter in a class or school. Now I'm wondering what schools did that. I went to several universities (spanning the gamut from lower tier-2 to top of the country) and only at the top school (GA Tech) did I experience a traditional lecture, and only for a couple courses.

gen220 9y ago

This comment thread echoes experience. I'm a soon-to-graduate CS student at an institution with an unspendably-large (in the billions) endowment, and yet the environments in which I've learned the most at this school, are those in which either (1) other students have been given the task of teaching me something or (2) vice versa. Notice the absence of traditional "classroom settings". Many of my fellow students feel the most lectures we've attended felt futile. It's not that we haven't learned anything from them (quite the opposite), it's just that it doesn't feel like the most efficient way to transfer knowledge, given 3 hours and an assembly of Smart People. Think – in what other time and place will you be able to assemble 30+ great minds, interested in a specific topic, and one of those minds is (hopefully) an expert in that topic? It feels like a waste, to assemble this magnitude of excellence and diversity, just for 1 person to speak for 3 hours. Obviously, the extreme alternative of chaotic 1-on-1 discussions between isolated friend groups would also be a waste – but it feels like there ought to be some goldilocks middle ground. The lecture environment's shortcomings are mitigated by a highly-engaged and question-happy audience, but large lecture halls/class sizes, and strict curriculum requirements dis-incentivize (1) paying attention enough to ask good questions and (2) answering good questions with detailed and fascinating tangents. A classmate recently shared this < https://www.recurse.com/ https://www.recurse.com/ > and it continues to strike me as an enlightened approach to CS education, as it directly leverages the imperfectly-overlapping distributions of knowledge of the "students" to further collective education – an idea which makes perfect sense, especially at the graduate or nearing-end-of-undergraduate levels. Perhaps we'd be better off running college as a continuous, 4-year Hackathon? :)

biotech 9y ago

There is plenty of research that supports alternative teaching methods. The problem is, success in these research studies does not always generalize well to classrooms around the world. There are a few reasons for this, I think. - When these methodologies are applied at the college or graduate school level, you have a bunch of students who are experienced and skilled at learning in the traditional lecture format. Changing that up in the final years of their educational career is not always going to be successful. - Anecdotally, many teachers report that less motivated students may fall way behind in alternative teaching methods. - Not all teachers are adept at teaching using alternative or "flipped classroom" methodologies. - When students have a bad teacher, the consequences of that are much much worse in flipped classroom than they are in standard lecture format. A bad lecturer will usually still get a certain amount of information across, but a bad flipped classroom facilitator can result in an entire class learning essentially nothing from a course. So there is significant risk to implementing alternative classroom methodologies.

dorfsmay 9y ago

I'm surprised the article nor the comments here mention Harvard professor Eric Mazur and his "evidence-based, interactive teaching" Peer Instruction method. This video is a bit long, but goes into details of his scientific approach to measuring results in the context of learning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwslBPj8GgI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwslBPj8GgI For more details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_instruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_instruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Mazur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Mazur

bo1024 9y ago

It's an interesting topic but this article didn't help me learn much about 'the case against lectures'. Of course there is no one-size-fits-all teaching method. So the questions are when to use which. My hypothesis is that lectures are better for students who are well-prepared and well-motivated. If they want to learn the material and have the background, then give them the material efficiently. But for younger students with broader backgrounds, lectures aren't as effective. However, it's easier said than done putting something else in their place.

woodandsteel 9y ago

As a former university teacher of public speaking, let me say that a large part of the problem is that most lectures are just poor in various ways. A really good lecture will capture your interest and get the information into your brain in a way that will make it stick.

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