I’m coming up for 5 years in a business faculty and it’s not really where I wanted to be. The kinds of research I do, the things I like to teach, are not about business. Okay, they can be applied to business and are really important to help business people make sense of technologies, but really, I’m much more interested in how people learn. There’s a whole heap of stuff we need to unpack to help us help other learn.
There was an interesting discussion about teaching on the WikiEducator list with some people suggesting that you cannot teach people, therefore, we shouldn’t even use the word. That’s an oversimplification, obviously, but it struck me as weird for a while. Lecturing is problematic, primarily because it is a one size fits all process. It’s hard to react to individual needs in a lecture and it does seem to have lost its shine. As a technology, the lecture has devolved into a PowerPoint presentation of too much information in too little time. With a large lecture, particularly my classes of 300, it’s impossible (for me at least) to make that session really interactive.
And then there’s the problem of attendance at lectures. My class on Tuesday night had about 20-25% attendance (I’m not really sure because I kept losing count, and what does that say about working when the managers of the future can’t be bothered?). Even in that smaller group, getting students to question and to reflect in a brief time is difficult. Perhaps I’m doing it wrong? Admittedly, there are one or two students who will voice an opinion, but they seem to be few.
A few weeks ago, I challenged students with the bald statement that: The lecture is dead. This got some good interaction, particularly because I was lecturing at the time. The dissonance of being in a lecture and hearing that the lecture is dead seemed to make it easier for students to question. Perhaps that’s the clue to getting greater engagement? Make some bold statements and wait for students to challenge me on that statement? Maybe. I thought I was doing that, but perhaps my challenges are not quite challenging enough.
Thanks for your writings on Kinemac. They brought me here, but to comment on this blog entry…
I respect you for making efforts to invent ways to engage your students. The profs I learned most from did the same.
Your “bold statement”(straw dog) idea doesn’t sit right with me, though. Sounds like a Fox News approach… artificial and a bit condescending.
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alison reply on November 7th, 2009:
Thanks for the comments about Kinemac. It’s a great app, but difficult for total newbies (like me).
The statement is more about getting a reaction. The irony of saying that in a lecture is not lost on some of the students. But it strikes me as weird, that in an age of interactivity, lectures still seem to be non-interactive and I’m at the ‘try anything’ stage.
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