3 ms·
Who needs instructors, for Christ's sake?
by helwr 16y ago
Who needs instructors, for Christ's sake?
- eru 16y agoDifferent people have different learning styles.
- helwr 16y agoAgree. But I'm deeply convinced that frontal lectures belong to the past, pre-Google past, and it is the predominant way of instruction today, regardless of student's personal learning style or preferences.
- pjscott 16y agoTraditional lectures, where one guy is standing in front of a room doing all the talking? Sure, those should die. Recorded lectures from a really good lecturer are a superior replacement. Instructors, on the other hand, are not obsolete. It's great to have someone who can answer questions, lead discussions, guide your study, and so on. If anybody wants to know what the university of the future should look like, this is a good place to start.
- matwood 16y agoWell at the college level and beyond I think the instructors really should be more like mentors or personal learning guides. If I want to learn about a topic and have no idea where to even start a mentor should be able to guide me to the proper resources to get going. They should also be able to give me milestones and be around when I have questions about understanding a topic. In my scenario an instructor should also test the student to verify that the student did learn and understand the material. It's completely possible for a student to read something, work with it and still miss certain subtleties about a given topic.
- helwr 16y agoThey should be. They should teach how to think, how to approach new problems. But with 100-200 students/class, 4 hr/week marathon lectures they cannot be teachers, even if they want to, but only fast food chain operators. I went to large schools, may be it's different in small "boutique" colleges, I don't know.
- tjr 16y agoI think it is different, or, at least, it can be. I went to a small college, with class sizes maxed out at 25 or 30, and frequently having less than that. My introductory linguistics class had six students, as I recall, and our "classroom" was usually sitting around a conference table discussing. One of the more popular classes (and thus regularly "packed" with 25 students) was a U.S. history class taught by a certain professor. He clearly had all of the material pre-planned in advance, but he was such a fascinating speaker to listen to that the material didn't come across as dry and bland. He was the sort of instructor that ought to make lecture recordings for students elsewhere to listen to.
- matwood 16y agoWow, I'm so happy I didn't go to a large school. I went to a smaller college (www.cofc.edu) and think I received a great education. In many of my majors classes there were maybe 20 people in them max. Every teacher knew me personally and had plenty of time for each student. Even the larger lecture hall type classes (for example science classes that every BS had to take) only had 60ish people in them IIRC.