I want to pick up on something Nabeel wrote about students just downloading slideware lecture material rather than going to class. Not long ago I attended a talk by an engineering professor from New Zealand who was talking about his department’s experience with podcasting lectures in one of their introductory required courses. What they noticed across three sections of the course was that as the semester progressed (especially after the midterm) attendance dropped to almost zero in what were large lecture courses. When they checked the download logs on the podcasts of the lectures what they found was that the vast majority of the downloads happened in the last week of the semester. In other words, the students simply blew off the course until the last week, downloaded the lectures and listened to them just before the exam.

Not surprisingly, they were very interested to see how the students who had stopped coming to class (the vast majority) did on the common exam given by the department. To their surprise, student results were consistent with the previous semesters’ results.

In his presentation, he pointed out that his colleagues drew two different conclusions from these data: what’s wrong with our teaching that students don’t have to come to class to do well, and, oh boy, I can just go into a studio in the summer, podcast all my lectures, post them online, and spend the rest of the semester in the lab!

Whether you subscribe to the former or latter of these conclusions, the data they gathered are pretty strong proof that lecturing has some serious problems. If neither the professor nor the students actually have to be there in the room together, then I could hire my 13 year-old to record my lectures for me and I could spend more time in the library!

Two years ago this month I wrote a series of posts in which I argued for a substantial rethinking of how we deliver the first two years of the college experience to our students. If we are going to keep lecturing at them in ever larger classrooms, then I stand by what I wrote then.

The method of learning is no different in kindergarten than it is in graduate courses. Almost no one would argue that children should be lectured to in kindergarten. Instead, the need for hands on activity determines the success of the education. Parents searching for schools for their children look to see if their child’s future teacher is engaged with the students. I have no doubt that if elementary educators simply lectured that the quality of their education would diminish. Yet, professors do the same thing and no one cares.

I agree that lecturing is becoming a ridiculous form of teaching for upper class and graduate courses. Due to the “basic” undergraduate courses universities require students to take, a professor often has no choice but to provide a lecture. These lectures are usually nothing more than a basic PowerPoint presentation. When students are given the option to download these PowerPoint presentations on the Internet, they are less likely to come to class. While some may blame the students, it is the teachers responsibility to elaborate the information. If students feel they are getting the same learning experience from a PowerPoint slide as they are in the classroom, it is a waste of not only the student’s time but the professor’s time also.

Professors and teachers need to embrace new methods of teaching. Laptops allow for students not only to engage in their classroom community but provide information to society as a whole. Wikis, virtual reality simulations, collaborative research through the Internet, etc. should not be demonized but embraced. The idea that laptops are the reason that students are losing attention is ridiculous. If anything, students’ use of laptops show that they are in need of new and more modern forms of learning and teachers are unwilling to accommodate them.

Would you happen to know a website where I could get more information on the specific pedagogy that Dennis Jacobs uses for his large classes.

I find this a very interesting post in that I teach a course for the Army called ABIC (Army Basic Instructors Course). It is a mandatory course for any soldier that is to be assigned as an official military instructor. It is an 80 hour course that teaches a lot about what has been discussed here: engagement and interaction. Yet there are other components that are also important that I find many instructors/professors often forget about. Simple things such as active listening, mannerisms, confidence, voice pitch and tone go a long way in make the “lecture” or presentation much more enjoyable, understandable, bearable and educational.

Another big component that is also vitally important and one that I believe is still valid with regards to Curt Fiedler’s comments is that of motivation. In my course I teach soldiers that the very first thing to be presented is a motivational opening. Something to grab the students attention as well as to show them why this block of instruction is important and should be learned. Weather it is for mathmatics, chemistry, English, history, or hand-to-hand combat; people need to know the “why,” and the “so what.”

Thank you and great blog.

I teach biology and chemistry, and it’s very clear all but the most gifted or experienced students need a lecture for a large portion of the material. Chemistry is different than biology, because students have to become proficient with various calculations. You have to be interactive in that discpline. But you also have to show them the concepts behind the calculations. They aren’t going to figure that out on their own.

As for attention spans being poor, and retention of only 20% – is that so surprising? The latter (20%) isn’t new, and is why most students need to review notes, text, or whatever materials they have to learn these concepts. As for attention spans – what do you expect from Americans these days? Our society has systematically lowered standards and expectations to the point where we are not competitive with other developed (and many undeveloped) countries in technical academic fields.

Laptop use in lectures (except for note taking) is a symptom of the problem. And the problem is societal. We’ve become mostly a nation of consumers, not makers and do-ers. And that laziness is there at all levels of the education spectrum. We are too busy worried about “Idol” to get our acts together.

For example, I know that Dennis Jacobs, who, as you point out, has made active learning work very well in very large courses, does indeed lecture a little. But instead of leading off with a lecture, he creates a “time for telling” through active learning techniques.

For instance, Dennis might have students predict the outcome of a front-of-the-classroom demonstration (using clicker-facilitated small group discussions). When Dennis performs the demonstration and his students see that most of their predictions were wrong, Dennis has created a “time for telling.” At that point, a 10-minute explanation of the demonstration (a “lecture”) works very well. The students are cognitively ready for the explanation (since they’ve already been thinking about the demo) and affectively ready (since they want to know why they were all wrong).

A well-timed explanation from an expert can be very useful for student learning, but if a “time for telling” hasn’t been created, then that explanation might not do any good.

Two other quick points: Your note about attention span is on the money, and it argues for “mini-lectures” of 10-20 minutes when lectures are used.

The comments about student note-taking are insightful, as well. Here’s a great post exploring the potential benefits of taking notes via concept maps instead of verbal transcriptions: http://cte-blog.uwaterloo.ca/?p=956,