I resumed my teaching three weeks ago after the autumn break, and while trying to explain something to a group of students, I asked for paper and pen. None of the people in that group had those, and when I asked in the class, only two students had paper and pen with them. Their reason was that since they do everything on laptop, they don't see a need to bring paper and pen in the classroom. I then announced to the whole class that from next week each one of them was required to bring paper and pen, and take down notes when I go through the lecture!
Perhaps my request of pen and paper was unusual. Isn't the old-fashioned lecture on the way out?
A 2014 study showed test scores in Science and Maths improved after professors replaced lecture time with "active learning" methods like group work, prompting Harvard physicist Eric Mazur, who has long campaigned against the lecture format, to declare that "it's almost unethical to be lecturing". In many quarters, the active learning craze is only the latest development in a long tradition of complaining about boring professors.
Today's fad for active learning is nothing new. In 1852, John Henry Newman wrote in The Idea Of A University that true learning "consists not merely in the passive reception into the mind of a number of ideas hitherto unknown to it, but in the mind's energetic and simultaneous action upon and towards and among those new ideas." So a good lecture class does just what Newman said: It keeps students' minds in energetic and simultaneous action. And it teaches a rare skill in our smartphone-app-addled culture: the art of attention, the crucial first step in the "critical thinking" that educationists prize.
Those who want to abolish the lecture course do not understand what a lecture is. A lecture is not the recitation of an encyclopedia article or facts on a whole topic. Rather, a lecture places a premium on the connections between individual facts. Absorbing a long, complex concept or argument is hard work, requiring students to synthesize, organise and react as they listen. In today's time, when any reading assignment longer than a Facebook post seems difficult, students have little experience doing this.
But if we abandon the lecture format because students may find it difficult, we do them a disservice. Moreover, we capitulate to the worst features of the customer-service mentality that has seeped into the educational institutes from the business world. The solution, instead, is to teach those students how to gain all a great lecture course has to give them.
Many many times I see my students drifting away, either on laptop or mobile phones when I am in the midst of explaining something complex and crucial for their learning; and then I realize that I first need to start by teaching them how to create space in their inner world, so they could take on that concept on a clean slate-- basically how to listen. The art of listening helps the students learn to clear their minds and improve focus. This ability to concentrate is not just a study skill. Think in a larger perspective--- "Can they listen to a political candidate with an analytical ear? Can they go and listen to their minister with an attentive mind? Can they listen to one another? One of the things a lecture does is build that habit of listening.
Listening continuously and taking notes for an hour is an unusual cognitive experience for most young people. Professors should embrace lecture courses as an exercise in mindfulness and attention building, a mental workout that counteracts the junk food of non-stop social media. I usually ask my students to stop 'staring' at their laptops and write down their notes on paper as I explain the topic. Initially there is some resistance, but soon, they start liking it. I think the students value a break from their multitasking lives. The classroom is an unusual space for them to be in: Here's a person talking about complicated formulas and pathways, challenging their pre-conceived notions, and trying not to dumb them down, not playing for laughs, requiring 60 minutes of focused attention.
Holding students' attention is not easy. I lecture from detailed notes, which I assimilate before each class until I know the script well. I move around the class, wave my arms and ask questions to which I expect an answer. When the hour is done, I am exhausted but happy! A good lecturer is "someone who conveys that there's something at stake in what you are talking about". Good lecturers communicate the emotional vitality of the intellectual discourse. ("The way she lectured always made me make connections to my own body systems and previous topics," wrote one of my students in online feedback.)
But we also must persuade students to value that aspect of a lecture course often regarded as drudgery: note-taking. Note-taking is important partly for the record it creates, but the real power of good notes lies in how they shape the mind. Learning to take attentive and analytical notes can greatly help in presenting their power point slides clearly as well as defending their answers in front of the class. However technology can sabotage note-taking. Studies suggest that taking notes by hand helps students master material better than typing notes on a laptop, probably because most find it impossible to take verbatim notes with pen and paper. Verbatim transcription of the lecture is never the goal: Students should synthesize their own points as they listen.
Lecturing in classroom is not a "passive" learning experience, and it cannot be replicated by asking students to watch videotaped lectures online: The temptations of the Internet, the safeguard of the rewind button and the comforts of 'own' room are deadly to the attention span. A lecture course teaches students that listening is not the same thing as thinking about what you plan to say next--- and that critical thinking depends on mastery of facts, not knee-jerk opinions.
In conclusion, lectures are essential for teaching the students most basic skills: comprehension and reasoning, skills whose value extends beyond the classroom to the essential demands of working life and citizenship. Such a student learns "when to speak and when to be silent", Newman wrote. "He is able to converse, he is able to listen."
Perhaps my request of pen and paper was unusual. Isn't the old-fashioned lecture on the way out?
A 2014 study showed test scores in Science and Maths improved after professors replaced lecture time with "active learning" methods like group work, prompting Harvard physicist Eric Mazur, who has long campaigned against the lecture format, to declare that "it's almost unethical to be lecturing". In many quarters, the active learning craze is only the latest development in a long tradition of complaining about boring professors.
Today's fad for active learning is nothing new. In 1852, John Henry Newman wrote in The Idea Of A University that true learning "consists not merely in the passive reception into the mind of a number of ideas hitherto unknown to it, but in the mind's energetic and simultaneous action upon and towards and among those new ideas." So a good lecture class does just what Newman said: It keeps students' minds in energetic and simultaneous action. And it teaches a rare skill in our smartphone-app-addled culture: the art of attention, the crucial first step in the "critical thinking" that educationists prize.
Those who want to abolish the lecture course do not understand what a lecture is. A lecture is not the recitation of an encyclopedia article or facts on a whole topic. Rather, a lecture places a premium on the connections between individual facts. Absorbing a long, complex concept or argument is hard work, requiring students to synthesize, organise and react as they listen. In today's time, when any reading assignment longer than a Facebook post seems difficult, students have little experience doing this.
But if we abandon the lecture format because students may find it difficult, we do them a disservice. Moreover, we capitulate to the worst features of the customer-service mentality that has seeped into the educational institutes from the business world. The solution, instead, is to teach those students how to gain all a great lecture course has to give them.
Many many times I see my students drifting away, either on laptop or mobile phones when I am in the midst of explaining something complex and crucial for their learning; and then I realize that I first need to start by teaching them how to create space in their inner world, so they could take on that concept on a clean slate-- basically how to listen. The art of listening helps the students learn to clear their minds and improve focus. This ability to concentrate is not just a study skill. Think in a larger perspective--- "Can they listen to a political candidate with an analytical ear? Can they go and listen to their minister with an attentive mind? Can they listen to one another? One of the things a lecture does is build that habit of listening.
Listening continuously and taking notes for an hour is an unusual cognitive experience for most young people. Professors should embrace lecture courses as an exercise in mindfulness and attention building, a mental workout that counteracts the junk food of non-stop social media. I usually ask my students to stop 'staring' at their laptops and write down their notes on paper as I explain the topic. Initially there is some resistance, but soon, they start liking it. I think the students value a break from their multitasking lives. The classroom is an unusual space for them to be in: Here's a person talking about complicated formulas and pathways, challenging their pre-conceived notions, and trying not to dumb them down, not playing for laughs, requiring 60 minutes of focused attention.
Holding students' attention is not easy. I lecture from detailed notes, which I assimilate before each class until I know the script well. I move around the class, wave my arms and ask questions to which I expect an answer. When the hour is done, I am exhausted but happy! A good lecturer is "someone who conveys that there's something at stake in what you are talking about". Good lecturers communicate the emotional vitality of the intellectual discourse. ("The way she lectured always made me make connections to my own body systems and previous topics," wrote one of my students in online feedback.)
But we also must persuade students to value that aspect of a lecture course often regarded as drudgery: note-taking. Note-taking is important partly for the record it creates, but the real power of good notes lies in how they shape the mind. Learning to take attentive and analytical notes can greatly help in presenting their power point slides clearly as well as defending their answers in front of the class. However technology can sabotage note-taking. Studies suggest that taking notes by hand helps students master material better than typing notes on a laptop, probably because most find it impossible to take verbatim notes with pen and paper. Verbatim transcription of the lecture is never the goal: Students should synthesize their own points as they listen.
Lecturing in classroom is not a "passive" learning experience, and it cannot be replicated by asking students to watch videotaped lectures online: The temptations of the Internet, the safeguard of the rewind button and the comforts of 'own' room are deadly to the attention span. A lecture course teaches students that listening is not the same thing as thinking about what you plan to say next--- and that critical thinking depends on mastery of facts, not knee-jerk opinions.
In conclusion, lectures are essential for teaching the students most basic skills: comprehension and reasoning, skills whose value extends beyond the classroom to the essential demands of working life and citizenship. Such a student learns "when to speak and when to be silent", Newman wrote. "He is able to converse, he is able to listen."
No comments:
Post a Comment