Reading some terrific blogging over at "The Clutter Museum", a new find for me. [Link to blog]. The post that has driven me back here to my own blog is the piece of trillwing's May 24 entry entitled "The tyranny of content" [Link to full entry].
Specifically resonating for me are her comments related to perceptions held by many higher-ed instructors that classroom knowledge transfer via all lecture, all the time is the preferred instructional approach. Small group discussion and other such activities are raise eyebrows and are thought of as new and innovative and relegated to alternative, or "if I have time", activities. Specifically, the PhD Mom, who works with faculty to student center their focus, said:
Tens of thousands of people come through this building every day. And yet I rarely hear student voices, except during passing periods between classes. The talking emanates mostly from foreign-language classes, where students are hunched over textbooks or workbooks, mumbling through exercises or conversing haltingly with their classmates.
I was naive. I was shocked to learn that people from across the disciplines still lecture all the time. And I pointed this out to the science faculty at the talk--that they had it backward. That lecturing should be considered the "alternative" method, and interactivity and active learning should constitute our modus operandi.
She coined the phrase, "tyranny of content" in exhorting some science faculty to focus on learning to learn rather than trying to cover all the content. This strikes so close to home. How many of our faculty, no matter the discipline, feel they must mention all points of content, be it from text book, web site, etc.? Instead of helping students learn how to extrapolate important concepts from readings, postings, videos, or other resources, our faculty think they must TELL them the important points or they will miss them.
I know there is something to this mindset as our students have become passive and used to someone telling them what is important. That is regrettable. But must we perpetuate the error? What if we decide to talk no longer than 15 minutes per hour of learning? We would, at first, befuddle our students. But once they were empowered to take responsibility for their own learning, I'm betting we would drastically improve that learning, well beyond the assessment and the semester.
I'm afraid I have echoed the thoughts voiced by George Siemens (who's blog, elearnspace, I never miss), who said in a recent posting:
Educators are concerned about student use of technology in the classroom. Laptops are an easy exit point from a lecture. A few years ago, I upset a series of colleagues when I stated something to the effect of "if students are distracted in your class, the issue is not with them, but with you as a teacher". [Link to full posting].
I wonder if we would see more benefit to technology in the classroom if we stopped lecturing and started facilitating its use for learning.
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