Don't Lecture Me, Really.

Jejak PandaMenambah Ilmu Dengan Membaca Di Situs Kesayangan Anda
judi ceme online

Last Friday I had a feed for my first year students.  About twelve came to my building around dinner time to socialize over chili, corn bread muffins, warm cider, and brownies.

We sat in a circle to eat, and since they are all shy and also from two different classes, I asked them to introduce themselves, and then I asked each one to tell us about her best and worst class so far at this, the midterm of their first semester of college.

All of them had great stories to tell about exciting classes, and several even said they loved all of their classes.  But some had horror stories to share.  Many of these were predictable, like students who dislike math complaining about their math class, but several complained about courses they expected to love but found disappointing because the courses were just lecture.

One student said that she had two English classes she was excited about but that she was only doing the reading for one.  This was because the class was all student-led discussion, and if she didn’t keep up with the reading she wouldn’t be able to participate.  The other class, however, was just lecture followed up with tests based on the lectures.  All she had to do was take notes and then read over her notes before the tests.  She knew this wasn’t ideal and that she should be reading the books, but with so much to do in all her classes, this was the expedient thing to do.

This conversation came six days after Mary Worthen, who teaches history at UNC-Chapel Hill, published an op-ed in the New York Times that celebrated and called for a revival of the lecture in college classrooms.  Worthen’s piece has precipitated an array of comments and many published responses, both affirming and condemning.

I fall in with the critics, for several reasons.

Certainly there are more and less effective lecturers.  Some people are just better public speakers.  And there are professors who are ineffective at implementing active learning pedagogies.  In fact, reading the comments in response to Worthen’s piece, many people reduce their evidence to memories of professors who were engaging lecturers or professors who used group projects that turned nightmarishly unproductive.  For the record, I have had both experiences.

But anecdotal evidence aside, it’s hard to contradict the research, and there’s been a lot of it in recent years.  A 2012 piece in Harvard Magazine by Craig Lambert argued for the demise of the lecture based on more than a decade of classroom-based research at Harvard.  A much cited 2014 study published by the National Academy of Sciences demonstrated definitively that student performance in science, math, and engineering improved dramatically when professors effectively used active learning strategies.  And in her recent NY Times piece, Annie Murphy Paul cites several 2014 and 2015 studies that demonstrate that the students who most benefit from active learning strategies are women, minorities, low-income students, and first generation college students.

So why are some defending the lecture?  As a former colleague of mine was fond of saying, you are entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts.

The other, more pragmatic thing that frightens me about the defense of the lecture is that it plays into the hands of those who would radically transform colleges to deliver content (and degrees) more cost-effectively. This would include reducing the teaching force, using even more contingent faculty, and eliminating or at least drastically reducing face-to-face instruction.  I mean, if a lecture is the ideal instructional model, then hire one person to record a series of lectures and make the podcast available for a fee to as many people as want to pay for the access.  We have seven sections of English 2407, The Short Story, being offered next semester, with a cap of 35 students in each section.  That’s 245 students and seven instructors.  Why not fire six of them and let one lecture with all 245 students watching live or remotely?  Don’t doubt that there are some who like this idea!

I had an exchange with one guy in the blogosphere about Worthen’s piece, and he asserted that he had the attention span for lectures and learned effectively from them.  I replied that I did, too.  Then I said, “Sorry for the sports analogy, but I also have the attention span to watch a three-hour baseball game, and I learn a lot about the sport from watching.  But I don’t assume I’ll be a better player than if I actually played the game.” 

I got no response.