What advice can you give to improve your lecture? It gets a little boring to come to class and talk and students just sit there. Just trying to find ways to improve and get students engaged without the traditional me talk and you take notes.
Quote from: HigherEd7 on November 14, 2019, 02:57:03 PM
What advice can you give to improve your lecture? It gets a little boring to come to class and talk and students just sit there. Just trying to find ways to improve and get students engaged without the traditional me talk and you take notes.
Even in a pretty big class, you can incorporate a decent amount of discussion into a lecture. If it is at all possible, I try to incorporate visual images into powerpoint that I can ask questions about. Here's this graph or table, does anything about it surprise you? How is the German soldier portrayed in this propaganda poster? What do you notice about the way marriage is portrayed in this 1950s coffee ad? You can ask questions at other moments where students have the ability to easily engage without feeling like they need to know everything about some topic already.
I find that the advantage of this approach is that at minimum it breaks things up a bit, but it also can lead to students asking questions about something, and sometimes an actual discussion breaks out where they start responding to each other.
Someone recommended this to me early in my career: What's the Use of Lectures? (https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Use-Lectures-Donald-Bligh/dp/0787951625)
Click-baity title but it's full of ways to incorporate all sorts of engagement techniques into a lecture, without throwing the lecture out entirely.
We have a huge undergraduate intro year-1 course, and one of our bright young hip TAs taught a module that incorporated Slido. The students loved it. As far as I can tell, it's no different than your standard clicker setup, except that it uses phones instead of school-issued tech that is mandatory and tiresome to remember--but that sense of engaging with your own gadget may be important. Or maybe it was just the change from park-and-bark lectures that have been so much the norm for so long.
Ahhh, the lecture, every nouveau teaching's whipping boy. How can we sell our latest teaching technique without positioning it against the bogey man.
First off, the lecture works, even it its old-school format. It's the student that doesn't. Teachers had to give up on the lecture, partly because too many professors gave up on students taking notes. And when I say note-taking, I don't mean the capture of, disseminated information via real-time auditory mediation, into written text. That's bulls**t. That's not note-taking, no matter what the ADA office says. There are automated transcription services for that now or you can be old-fashioned and record it. Or as my ADA office puts it, give them the "notes," the pptx, in advance--Ha Ha.
When I say note-taking during lectures, I mean, the student who is prepared (from completing and keeping up with assigned readings and assignments correlated with the lecture), listens attentively, makes connections with the corresponding readings/assignments, asks the right questions, then identifies, summarizes, and connects, and then expresses those thoughts in their own original notes that make those thoughts stick and be applicable to future assignments/lectures/activities/questions/projects--all done in real-time. Lecturing is a highly interactive, effective, and sometimes pleasurable activity, if the students engage the lecture in this way. Yeah, tall order. If they can't do it, screw 'em. Challenge them to do so, after taking some time time to show them what they should have learned in high school how to take notes during a lecture or directing them to the remediation center where they can learn how to be a college student.
Lectures work. If the lecture format is not working, check to make sure it's not the student making it ineffective, before dismissing or modifying the lecture.
To take a slightly different tack than lightning, what is the goal of a given class meeting or portion thereof and what's the best way to achieve that goal?
What percentage of the students are engaged in their own education and have adequate background to benefit from whatever the goal of the given class meeting is?
A good discussion generally won't happen with underprepared/undermotivated students who resent being required to take the class and can't/won't/don't do the necessary preparation for a given session. Think/pair/share, voting via phone/clicker, and other interactive techniques fall flat with people who can't/won't/don't engage, which can frustrate the students who prepared and attempt to engage. Super Dinky lost the top of several cohorts who cited poor experiences in class with their colleagues who refused to doing the reading to be able to participate in discussions as reason for transferring to institutions with a larger fraction of academically prepared and engaged-in-their-own-education students.
My "favorite" teaching moment was during a discussion in intro chemistry when the same question (word-for-word) was asked in class for the third time in a row in a 10-minute period. The student who asked the question the first time to start us off shouted, "Dr. Mer literally just answered that question twice! We've been discussing that question for the past 10 minutes! Where have you been?!" They've been staring off into space and only just now tuned back in when the prompt of "any other questions on this topic?" was made. That particular question is always asked by someone when we get to that section of the course, which is why I start that specific section with a discussion instead of just lecturing on the related points; that term, though, the section as a whole was so disengaged that it would have been less frustrating all around if I had just put the question on the board and then lectured on it.
A great demo may or may not actually convey the information to underprepared/undermotivated students. I've been amazed at how audience affects the same demo at the same class level. Some sections really get it and some sections take away nothing, even after the phones have been put away and everyone has been subject to the "one, two, three, eyes on me" exhortation. Again, I've been amazed at how people can check out during demos that include fire, the bowling ball on the rope that one year did smash into my face due to a slip, or other demos that are fabulous live and generally go over well with general members of the public, but sometimes fall flat with people who flat out resent being present and have decided they won't do anything to advance their own learning.
A great lecture (one that does much more than simply repeat the material in the same way as other preparation) tends to fall flat for people who aren't prepped, but works fabulously for those who prepped and then need help putting the pieces together, one more example explained a different way, or a structure that helps make clear the main points and which details flesh out each point.
Many of us know research in favor of activities other than lecture like:
Quote
[A Harvard study], published Sept. 4 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that, though students felt as if they learned more through traditional lectures, they actually learned more when taking part in classrooms that employed so-called active-learning strategies.
...
"Often, students seemed genuinely to prefer smooth-as-silk traditional lectures," Deslauriers said. "We wanted to take them at their word. Perhaps they actually felt like they learned more from lectures than they did from active learning."
...
"Deep learning is hard work. The effort involved in active learning can be misinterpreted as a sign of poor learning," he said. "On the other hand, a superstar lecturer can explain things in such a way as to make students feel like they are learning more than they actually are."
Reference: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/09/study-shows-that-students-learn-more-when-taking-part-in-classrooms-that-employ-active-learning-strategies/
And yet, outside of the environments where students are academically prepared and motivated to do the work with faculty members who have substantially bought into active learning with substantially redesigned courses that are based on active learning, those of us with experience find a lot of resistance to active learning techniques from the students. Some of that is justified:
Quote
Students also resist because active learning isn't always effectively designed. Neither are lectures, but when the teacher drones on and the content wanders from here to there, students can tune out and pretend that they're listening. Working with others to discuss what they need to know from the reading isn't all that productive when group members are prepared to varying degrees and the discussion occurs without some teacher-provided context. Objections to poorly designed and implemented active learning are justified.
Reference: https://www.teachingprofessor.com/topics/teaching-strategies/active-learning/students-resist-active-learning/
Quote
Vary your teaching methods. Some students may resist your attempts to integrate active-learning strategies simply because you rely too heavily on one kind of activity. You want your teaching to benefit both the extrovert who loves collaborative exercises and the bookworm who excels at in-class writing assignments. Mix it up on a regular basis and keep everyone on their toes.
Lecture sometimes. Finally, don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. There are (still!) perfectly good reasons to lecture to your students -- some of the time. For one, you know a lot about the course topic and students will benefit from you telling them what you know. But perhaps more important, a lecture component can help increase the benefits of the learner-centered activities that take up the rest of class time. Get in the habit of closing every class period with a brief summary or synthesis of what you think your students learned in the preceding hour. Any students who are unsure about your new methods may appreciate the familiarity of a professor "re-emerging" for the last 10 minutes to captain the rudderless ship. By providing a conclusion to each class period, you'll help students build on what they learn from day to day, and help to reassure them that this brave new world isn't so scary after all.
Reference: https://chroniclevitae.com/news/893-why-students-resist-active-learning
Great responses and information. I find it pretty frustrating that you spend hours reading and prepping for a great lecture, and students are not prepared, and when you ask them a question they have no idea what you are talking about.
Quote from: lightning on November 15, 2019, 03:17:24 AM
Ahhh, the lecture, every nouveau teaching's whipping boy. How can we sell our latest teaching technique without positioning it against the bogey man.
First off, the lecture works, even it its old-school format. It's the student that doesn't. Teachers had to give up on the lecture, partly because too many professors gave up on students taking notes. And when I say note-taking, I don't mean the capture of, disseminated information via real-time auditory mediation, into written text. That's bulls**t. That's not note-taking, no matter what the ADA office says. There are automated transcription services for that now or you can be old-fashioned and record it. Or as my ADA office puts it, give them the "notes," the pptx, in advance--Ha Ha.
When I say note-taking during lectures, I mean, the student who is prepared (from completing and keeping up with assigned readings and assignments correlated with the lecture), listens attentively, makes connections with the corresponding readings/assignments, asks the right questions, then identifies, summarizes, and connects, and then expresses those thoughts in their own original notes that make those thoughts stick and be applicable to future assignments/lectures/activities/questions/projects--all done in real-time. Lecturing is a highly interactive, effective, and sometimes pleasurable activity, if the students engage the lecture in this way. Yeah, tall order. If they can't do it, screw 'em. Challenge them to do so, after taking some time time to show them what they should have learned in high school how to take notes during a lecture or directing them to the remediation center where they can learn how to be a college student.
Lectures work. If the lecture format is not working, check to make sure it's not the student making it ineffective, before dismissing or modifying the lecture.
Reading all of this raises a question:
Why not just videotape lectures and have students watch them? If the effectiveness of lectures is all about the effort the students put in to take notes and so on,
what , if any, benefit is there to actually being in the same room? Notes can be taken just as well from a video; arguably more so since the video can be paused, rewound, etc.
Then what would you do in a face to face class?
Quote from: marshwiggle on November 15, 2019, 06:25:55 AM
Quote from: lightning on November 15, 2019, 03:17:24 AM
Ahhh, the lecture, every nouveau teaching's whipping boy. How can we sell our latest teaching technique without positioning it against the bogey man.
First off, the lecture works, even it its old-school format. It's the student that doesn't. Teachers had to give up on the lecture, partly because too many professors gave up on students taking notes. And when I say note-taking, I don't mean the capture of, disseminated information via real-time auditory mediation, into written text. That's bulls**t. That's not note-taking, no matter what the ADA office says. There are automated transcription services for that now or you can be old-fashioned and record it. Or as my ADA office puts it, give them the "notes," the pptx, in advance--Ha Ha.
When I say note-taking during lectures, I mean, the student who is prepared (from completing and keeping up with assigned readings and assignments correlated with the lecture), listens attentively, makes connections with the corresponding readings/assignments, asks the right questions, then identifies, summarizes, and connects, and then expresses those thoughts in their own original notes that make those thoughts stick and be applicable to future assignments/lectures/activities/questions/projects--all done in real-time. Lecturing is a highly interactive, effective, and sometimes pleasurable activity, if the students engage the lecture in this way. Yeah, tall order. If they can't do it, screw 'em. Challenge them to do so, after taking some time time to show them what they should have learned in high school how to take notes during a lecture or directing them to the remediation center where they can learn how to be a college student.
Lectures work. If the lecture format is not working, check to make sure it's not the student making it ineffective, before dismissing or modifying the lecture.
Reading all of this raises a question: Why not just videotape lectures and have students watch them? If the effectiveness of lectures is all about the effort the students put in to take notes and so on, what , if any, benefit is there to actually being in the same room? Notes can be taken just as well from a video; arguably more so since the video can be paused, rewound, etc.
What Polly said.
Try listening or watching to some of the Great Courses. You can get some for free, including from libraries. There's nothing wrong with traditional lectures if you have students who can listen.
I lecture because it is easiest for me. If I have time or I know the material extremely well, I prepare some kind of Socratic method. Quite often these days I will show short lectures by other people who are experts in the field.
I'm a bit suspicious of the whole idea of "best practices." What is good in one context is not good in another. Being a good educator requires trial and error, and there will be a lot of error before you find what works.
One of my favorite student comments in one of my earlier courses was (paraphrasing) " It's 8:15 in the morning, I don't WANT to talk to my neighbor about anything at that hour!". And this was at a super-elite school.
Here at barely selective, compass point comprehensive, the big issue I have is that students can't discuss course topics because they don't understand the vocabulary being used (science class). There is also a huge peer pressure here not to appear too smart- so even more reluctance to be seen using them fancy words. So I have to spend a lot of time lecturing just to get us to the point of asking an interesting question. I do use clickers, and they help with getting some level of feedback. But I also want to teach my students to be able to think and concentrate on something other than their phone, so I only use them at designated times, like the start of class, and then they are told to put them away.
There's a lot of discussion around "flipping the classroom" at my institution. Here's a link to a different university's website on it as a starting point: https://facultyinnovate.utexas.edu/flipped-classroom
There is also much use in larger lectures of interactive technology. I can't think of the one many professors use (I teach smaller, graduate classes), but Mentimeter is the same type of interactive tech.
I typically use a combination of interactive lecture and student-prepared discussions.
Interesting concept, but what if your students are not engaged or have not done the assignment, which means they can't participate and the members in their group can't as well. The what do you do?
Quote from: KiUlv on November 15, 2019, 02:37:51 PM
There's a lot of discussion around "flipping the classroom" at my institution. Here's a link to a different university's website on it as a starting point: https://facultyinnovate.utexas.edu/flipped-classroom
There is also much use in larger lectures of interactive technology. I can't think of the one many professors use (I teach smaller, graduate classes), but Mentimeter is the same type of interactive tech.
I typically use a combination of interactive lecture and student-prepared discussions.
Start with a dance.
Seriously.
M.
Thanks for the response. Some of us are trying to learn and get better. It might be a good idea to take your own advice:
Use your wit and intelligence to figure out how to be kinder
Senior Member
Quote from: mamselle on November 15, 2019, 04:28:45 PM
Start with a dance.
Seriously.
M.
You've obviously not seen me dance.
As others are suggesting, the best lecturing practice is to not lecture exclusively. You've gotten many good tips above about how to engage students. There's no one trick to doing that; the best "lecturers" figure out what works for them. Some use active learning, some are funny, some are fantastic storytellers that could make the phone book scintillating, some incorporate discussion, some make up case studies students can debate in class, some use clickers, some use smart-phone treasure hunts, some are wildly unpredictable and make students pay attention because they never know what will come next, some dress up in costume, some incorporate games, some throw out wild statements for shock value and to see if anyone is listening, some move around the room as they talk, some sing, some dance, some use PowerPoint, some never use PowerPoint, etc.
Hunh?
That's exactly what I do.
I wasn't being snarky.
In French class, I have six folk and historic dances we cycle through in the semester. Students are expected to learn the words as well as the movements. The texts tie to word groups we're working on in specific chapters. The dances come from places and historic periods we cover in the course of the semester. They're integrated with art and music examples and a are part of the exams and spoken practice drills.
In art history, we learn Nigerian dances when studying the bronze masks of the Ibo and Nigerian peoples. We learn swing dance when studying the Harlem Renaissance. We do contras when studying Breugel (there are indications the forms of the folk dances he shows may have been precursorial to French and English longways dances).
When studying the Romantic era in painting and sculpture, we listen to music and watch dance clips from those eras. When learning about East Indian artworks, we see Bharat Natrim and other dance styles.
When teaching dance history or dance ethnology, we do and watch dances in every single class. Slide lectures go with most of these, but in the fields I teach in, I'd be seriously remiss if I omitted dance, and music, and art from those classes' activities.
And for an 8.00 am class, nothing wakes up people faster than moving all the desks out of the middle of the room and starting "a long ways set for as many as will" when discussing attitudes towards music, dance and the arts in 17th c. New England (Playford's books are documented library holdings in many places...).
It's just another case where the norms are very field-dependent...
M.
Quote from: marshwiggle on November 15, 2019, 06:25:55 AM
Reading all of this raises a question: Why not just videotape lectures and have students watch them? If the effectiveness of lectures is all about the effort the students put in to take notes and so on, what , if any, benefit is there to actually being in the same room? Notes can be taken just as well from a video; arguably more so since the video can be paused, rewound, etc.
Because my lectures are designed to be participatory. I want students to ask question, respond to questions and have comments. If everybody just stares at me when I ask a question and I just talk and they listen, its not going well. I have zero interest in taping lectures.
Quote from: HigherEd7 on November 15, 2019, 03:15:02 PM
Interesting concept, but what if your students are not engaged or have not done the assignment, which means they can't participate and the members in their group can't as well. The what do you do?
Quote from: KiUlv on November 15, 2019, 02:37:51 PM
There's a lot of discussion around "flipping the classroom" at my institution. Here's a link to a different university's website on it as a starting point: https://facultyinnovate.utexas.edu/flipped-classroom
There is also much use in larger lectures of interactive technology. I can't think of the one many professors use (I teach smaller, graduate classes), but Mentimeter is the same type of interactive tech.
I typically use a combination of interactive lecture and student-prepared discussions.
That is obviously a risk you take and the challenge to overcome. Although it's been talked about quite a bit in our institution, it's not something I've actually tried myself. I do, however, have students prepare to lead a discussion each week, and they have to turn in "lesson plans" and I give them feedback prior to the discussion date. They also turn in reflections afterwards. The students really look forward to that part of it (at least the ones who are participating and not leading that week).
Quote from: lightning on November 15, 2019, 03:17:24 AM
Ahhh, the lecture, every nouveau teaching's whipping boy. How can we sell our latest teaching technique without positioning it against the bogey man.
First off, the lecture works, even it its old-school format. It's the student that doesn't.
[snip]
Lectures work. If the lecture format is not working, check to make sure it's not the student making it ineffective, before dismissing or modifying the lecture.
I'm with you, friend. I myself think that the best language for delivering lectures in is the old-school Latin, which has centuries of academic tradition behind it. My students don't like it when I lecture in Latin, but that's their problem. Lecturing in Latin works. It's the students who are failing in not understanding.
Why should we, as the educational professionals, have to match our teaching styles to today's students' backgrounds and abilities, when it was never necessary before?
Quote from: marshwiggle on November 15, 2019, 06:25:55 AM
Quote from: lightning on November 15, 2019, 03:17:24 AM
Ahhh, the lecture, every nouveau teaching's whipping boy. How can we sell our latest teaching technique without positioning it against the bogey man.
First off, the lecture works, even it its old-school format. It's the student that doesn't. Teachers had to give up on the lecture, partly because too many professors gave up on students taking notes. And when I say note-taking, I don't mean the capture of, disseminated information via real-time auditory mediation, into written text. That's bulls**t. That's not note-taking, no matter what the ADA office says. There are automated transcription services for that now or you can be old-fashioned and record it. Or as my ADA office puts it, give them the "notes," the pptx, in advance--Ha Ha.
When I say note-taking during lectures, I mean, the student who is prepared (from completing and keeping up with assigned readings and assignments correlated with the lecture), listens attentively, makes connections with the corresponding readings/assignments, asks the right questions, then identifies, summarizes, and connects, and then expresses those thoughts in their own original notes that make those thoughts stick and be applicable to future assignments/lectures/activities/questions/projects--all done in real-time. Lecturing is a highly interactive, effective, and sometimes pleasurable activity, if the students engage the lecture in this way. Yeah, tall order. If they can't do it, screw 'em. Challenge them to do so, after taking some time time to show them what they should have learned in high school how to take notes during a lecture or directing them to the remediation center where they can learn how to be a college student.
Lectures work. If the lecture format is not working, check to make sure it's not the student making it ineffective, before dismissing or modifying the lecture.
Reading all of this raises a question: Why not just videotape lectures and have students watch them? If the effectiveness of lectures is all about the effort the students put in to take notes and so on, what , if any, benefit is there to actually being in the same room? Notes can be taken just as well from a video; arguably more so since the video can be paused, rewound, etc.
Sometimes, a lecturer stops and asks questions. Sometimes a hand goes up to ask a question. Sometimes, as a result of several questions being similar, and showing interest, a lecture can and should pivot. Sometimes a fire alarm goes of. Live real-time does allow for flexibility in the moment, and sometimes you do need the flexibility.
However,
I have recorded lecture videos for an entire semester. I got so fed up one semester, the following semester, I videotaped my lectures. Then I made them watch the videos AND do the readings/assignments on their own time. I used in-class time for discussions, further activities, checking on how they took notes, teaching them how to take notes, helping them with homework, etc. It was a LOT of work. I realized I was teaching remedial college skills instead of going deep into content. We never really went deep into the content, which was what I naively thought would happen. Videos are great because you can check analytics, but I realized half of the students were not watching them. I ended up just repeating things in-person. Soooo, a lot more work for me. A lot more work for students. Complaints to admin because I was getting on people's arses and flunking students. It was a bad scene. In short, you can't blame the lecture and alternative approaches (flipped classroom, interactive, clicker-enabled) don't help either. Lazy and suck can, at best, achieve (using Mamselle's dance imagery as a metaphor) choreographed learning. And choreographed learning is done easiest through lecture (or mixed online/in-person formats, and I've tried that, too).
[Context: I teach at a large, public respectable-but-not-elite research university, and I only started teaching freshmen a few years ago. I don't have the same problems with grad students and juniors/seniors in my disciplinary area . . . if it wasn't for the students that care, I wouldn't be at my current job. But we need the lazy/unprepared freshmen, too, to keep the school running. Fortunately, the lazy/unprepared constitute only half of my intro class. The other half do well, and they go on to do great things in the program. ]
Thank you for the response! It just gets a little frustrating when you spend hours getting ready for class and it is not engaging, I think it also has something do with the level of students you have in your class.
Quote from: mamselle on November 15, 2019, 05:14:13 PM
Hunh?
That's exactly what I do.
I wasn't being snarky.
In French class, I have six folk and historic dances we cycle through in the semester. Students are expected to learn the words as well as the movements. The texts tie to word groups we're working on in specific chapters. The dances come from places and historic periods we cover in the course of the semester. They're integrated with art and music examples and a are part of the exams and spoken practice drills.
In art history, we learn Nigerian dances when studying the bronze masks of the Ibo and Nigerian peoples. We learn swing dance when studying the Harlem Renaissance. We do contras when studying Breugel (there are indications the forms of the folk dances he shows may have been precursorial to French and English longways dances).
When studying the Romantic era in painting and sculpture, we listen to music and watch dance clips from those eras. When learning about East Indian artworks, we see Bharat Natrim and other dance styles.
When teaching dance history or dance ethnology, we do and watch dances in every single class. Slide lectures go with most of these, but in the fields I teach in, I'd be seriously remiss if I omitted dance, and music, and art from those classes' activities.
And for an 8.00 am class, nothing wakes up people faster than moving all the desks out of the middle of the room and starting "a long ways set for as many as will" when discussing attitudes towards music, dance and the arts in 17th c. New England (Playford's books are documented library holdings in many places...).
It's just another case where the norms are very field-dependent...
M.
Quote from: aside on November 15, 2019, 05:09:48 PM
There's no one trick to doing that; the best "lecturers" figure out what works for them.
Yes. Trends in pedagogy always miss this. Students haven't suddenly become incapable of getting information from a lecture. You have to play to your strengths and adjust to the students. I like lecturing, and I think I'm pretty good at doing it in engaging ways that make it participatory and collaborative. I'm not particularly great at organizing stuff, which is probably why I tend to steer away from things like having students lead discussion and the like. I'm also not really great at organizing discussion. Increasingly in upper level classes, I do more free floating discussion, but that really relies on students who have things to say about the reading without a lot of prompting and so I don't do much of that in lower level classes.
The point is, figure out what you are good at, do that, and then adjust as needed.
I wonder how much of this thread is really people talking past each other because they mean different things by "lecture"? To me, anything participatory or collaborative is by definition not a lecture -- if students are expected to speak, it's a discussion, and if they are doing stuff, it's an activity, and both of those are distinct from lecturing.
Quote from: Caracal on November 15, 2019, 06:00:19 PM
Quote from: marshwiggle on November 15, 2019, 06:25:55 AM
Reading all of this raises a question: Why not just videotape lectures and have students watch them? If the effectiveness of lectures is all about the effort the students put in to take notes and so on, what , if any, benefit is there to actually being in the same room? Notes can be taken just as well from a video; arguably more so since the video can be paused, rewound, etc.
Because my lectures are designed to be participatory. I want students to ask question, respond to questions and have comments. If everybody just stares at me when I ask a question and I just talk and they listen, its not going well. I have zero interest in taping lectures.
That was precisely my point. If by "lecture" someone means essentially a one-way transfer [supposedly] of information, then there's no need to be in the same physical space at the same time. Whether you talk about "active learning" or a "flipped classroom", the
real-time interaction is the thing that a video can't provide. If there isn't any of that, then the video makes more sense.
Quote from: present_mirth on November 17, 2019, 01:32:13 PM
I wonder how much of this thread is really people talking past each other because they mean different things by "lecture"? To me, anything participatory or collaborative is by definition not a lecture -- if students are expected to speak, it's a discussion, and if they are doing stuff, it's an activity, and both of those are distinct from lecturing.
I completely agree! I also wonder how everyone is defining "lecture." Part of my class time is more lecture-based, but it's interactive with short activities and other forms of student participation. Not, therefore, traditional lecture.
Quote from: KiUlv on November 17, 2019, 03:21:11 PM
Quote from: present_mirth on November 17, 2019, 01:32:13 PM
I wonder how much of this thread is really people talking past each other because they mean different things by "lecture"? To me, anything participatory or collaborative is by definition not a lecture -- if students are expected to speak, it's a discussion, and if they are doing stuff, it's an activity, and both of those are distinct from lecturing.
I completely agree! I also wonder how everyone is defining "lecture." Part of my class time is more lecture-based, but it's interactive with short activities and other forms of student participation. Not, therefore, traditional lecture.
I asked my question earlier based on the assumption that probably everyone here has known profs who actually do stand up and spew for an hour with little or no feedback. But perhaps I'm out of date on that. Has that truly disappeared, or do even recent graduates here remember certain profs who did not interact at all?
Quote from: marshwiggle on November 17, 2019, 04:24:12 PM
Quote from: KiUlv on November 17, 2019, 03:21:11 PM
Quote from: present_mirth on November 17, 2019, 01:32:13 PM
I wonder how much of this thread is really people talking past each other because they mean different things by "lecture"? To me, anything participatory or collaborative is by definition not a lecture -- if students are expected to speak, it's a discussion, and if they are doing stuff, it's an activity, and both of those are distinct from lecturing.
I completely agree! I also wonder how everyone is defining "lecture." Part of my class time is more lecture-based, but it's interactive with short activities and other forms of student participation. Not, therefore, traditional lecture.
I asked my question earlier based on the assumption that probably everyone here has known profs who actually do stand up and spew for an hour with little or no feedback. But perhaps I'm out of date on that. Has that truly disappeared, or do even recent graduates here remember certain profs who did not interact at all?
Of course they do. Sometimes I do. There is info to transmit and explain. Sometimes setting out info by saying it works fine.
Quote from: downer on November 17, 2019, 04:53:53 PM
Quote from: marshwiggle on November 17, 2019, 04:24:12 PM
I asked my question earlier based on the assumption that probably everyone here has known profs who actually do stand up and spew for an hour with little or no feedback. But perhaps I'm out of date on that. Has that truly disappeared, or do even recent graduates here remember certain profs who did not interact at all?
Of course they do. Sometimes I do. There is info to transmit and explain. Sometimes setting out info by saying it works fine.
Especially in graduate courses, where cutting edge research means that the most up-to-date info is not widely disseminated, this makes sense. But when the information is well-established, and available in all kinds of print and online resources, it's much less obvious what value there is in one person standing in a room with other people and delivering the same information in the same manner as could be done
without them being face-to-face.
Quote from: present_mirth on November 17, 2019, 01:32:13 PM
I wonder how much of this thread is really people talking past each other because they mean different things by "lecture"? To me, anything participatory or collaborative is by definition not a lecture -- if students are expected to speak, it's a discussion, and if they are doing stuff, it's an activity, and both of those are distinct from lecturing.
If the main thing that is happening is me talking and going through material, then that's a lecture as far as I'm concerned. It isn't exclusive of anything else. If a discussion breaks out in the middle of my lecture, that's a great outcome. Sometimes, I lecture for part of the class and then have students do something in small groups, or have a planned discussion of a reading.
As for the other question, yes, I had professors who just lectured. Most of them liked questions and were willing to go off topic to answer them, but their basic model was that they talked and we listened. The two I can think of were both great at it. I mix things up more than that, but, especially in my lower level classes, I do a lot of lecturing.
I also just don't agree that even a lecture without much class participation is the same as watching a video. There's a different level of engagement with someone in the room. We can complain about phones in the classroom but I guarantee you that students watching a lecture on their computer are going to be more prone to distractions. Even if a professor isn't directly soliciting feedback, noticing how students react to, and engage with, the material is important. Even if students do seem bored and disengaged, I need to know that. I also just don't think most of us can translate very well into a video format. We aren't actors, we don't know how to speak to a camera. I'm pretty sure that if I had to tape lectures it would either be me weirdly wandering around and floating off camera, or me forcing myself to stare creepily at the camera and talking in a weird monotone.
Some people prefer lectures. I know I thought that most of my undergraduate lectures were a waste of time and if I were the student I'd prefer to read or watch video. But students are not rushing to do that.
Quote from: marshwiggle on November 18, 2019, 05:44:13 AM
Especially in graduate courses, where cutting edge research means that the most up-to-date info is not widely disseminated, this makes sense. But when the information is well-established, and available in all kinds of print and online resources, it's much less obvious what value there is in one person standing in a room with other people and delivering the same information in the same manner as could be done without them being face-to-face.
The question is not whether the information is "available" in various places. Nobody actually needs to take a class to learn about anything. The question is how you can structure a class so that students can get the most out of it. So, there can be all kinds of reasons why lecturing on something might be better.
A professor might prefer to lecture so students can get broader context quickly and then read stuff outside of class that looks at things more in depth or from particular perspectives. They might find that they can explain something in class in ways that helps students to understand the material more fully than reading something. There's nothing wrong with flipped classroom models, but there's nothing wrong with lecturing either and it all varies by discipline and teaching style.
Quote from: Caracal on November 18, 2019, 07:40:46 AM
A professor might prefer to lecture so students can get broader context quickly and then read stuff outside of class that looks at things more in depth or from particular perspectives. They might find that they can explain something in class in ways that helps students to understand the material more fully than reading something. There's nothing wrong with flipped classroom models, but there's nothing wrong with lecturing either and it all varies by discipline and teaching style.
So here's another question I will pose to people:
If a lecture benefits from the -face-to-face model even if there is no explicit interaction, is a lecture with 500 students any "worse" than a lecture with 50 students?
Quote from: marshwiggle on November 18, 2019, 07:59:09 AM
So here's another question I will pose to people:
If a lecture benefits from the -face-to-face model even if there is no explicit interaction, is a lecture with 500 students any "worse" than a lecture with 50 students?
If the professor really just comes in every day and talks? Probably not. And there are people who can legitimately pull that off, but you have to be a really gifted charismatic presence to make that happen. More commonly, I think you have classes where a professor has to just lecture because they have 100+ students and it isn't really practical to do much else, but in a smaller class the same professor would probably make things more interactive and it would be a better class as a result.
Quote from: marshwiggle on November 18, 2019, 07:59:09 AM
Quote from: Caracal on November 18, 2019, 07:40:46 AM
A professor might prefer to lecture so students can get broader context quickly and then read stuff outside of class that looks at things more in depth or from particular perspectives. They might find that they can explain something in class in ways that helps students to understand the material more fully than reading something. There's nothing wrong with flipped classroom models, but there's nothing wrong with lecturing either and it all varies by discipline and teaching style.
So here's another question I will pose to people:
If a lecture benefits from the -face-to-face model even if there is no explicit interaction, is a lecture with 500 students any "worse" than a lecture with 50 students?
Yes. With a 500-student model, you have a "sea of anonymity" phenomenon strongly exhibited. That is, it is far easier for students to find ways to distract themselves away from classroom learning. By becoming part of a crowd, they can disappear from observation (or feeling as if they are being observed). This allows them a greater sense of personal freedom to behave badly without consequences.
Come in late? Probably you won't even be noticed.
Leave early? Ditto.
Fail to even come to class? Ditto.
Watch netflix with your earbuds. Ditto.
Fall asleep? Ditto.
Sit on instagram? Ditto.
Randomly play with phone? Ditto.
Do homework for another class? Ditto.
Groin text? Heck, you dont' even need to hide your phone in a giant classroom. You can park it right on your desk and goof away.
This is very much how much of social media operates. With a heightened environment of detachment and anonymity (or even the perception of anonymity), there is a corresponding loss of responsibility and accountability.
Whereas in a small-medium classroom, students who are disengaged/distracted are far more likely to feel like they're standing out by burying themselves in their smartphone apps, listening to music, sleeping, playing video games, etc...
Simply put, large classrooms are much worse breeding grounds for bad student learning behaviors than are small to medium size classrooms. If you are a poorly selective or non-selective institution, amphitheater classrooms are not things that you want to be building. We teach to the students that we have. An appropriate physical classroom environment is a key component to that. Big classrooms nominally function for a bygone era of college students that were well prepared and well motivated to personally succeed. While those cohorts do still dominate at most R1's and selective SLAC's, the same cannot be said today for many R2's and even less selective institutions.
This is one of the reasons why community colleges in nearly all U.S. states do not even build classrooms that can fit more than 40 students in them.
I have taught nearly identical courses in large amphitheater, medium classrooms and small classrooms. The differences in student personal accountability are significant. On average, there is a direct correlation to positive student responsibility in class with decreasing classroom size. I will never again teach in a large classroom if I have a choice in the matter.
Quote from: Aster on November 18, 2019, 10:28:03 AM
This is very much how much of social media operates. With a heightened environment of detachment and anonymity (or even the perception of anonymity), there is a corresponding loss of responsibility and accountability.
Whereas in a small-medium classroom, students who are disengaged/distracted are far more likely to feel like they're standing out by burying themselves in their smartphone apps, listening to music, sleeping, playing video games, etc...
Do you know of any research to document this?
Quote from: marshwiggle on November 18, 2019, 10:47:14 AM
Quote from: Aster on November 18, 2019, 10:28:03 AM
This is very much how much of social media operates. With a heightened environment of detachment and anonymity (or even the perception of anonymity), there is a corresponding loss of responsibility and accountability.
Whereas in a small-medium classroom, students who are disengaged/distracted are far more likely to feel like they're standing out by burying themselves in their smartphone apps, listening to music, sleeping, playing video games, etc...
Do you know of any research to document this?
The anonymity thing (as it pertains to social media encouraging bad personal behaviors) has been discussed extensively in the regular media ever since internet chat rooms came into widespread usage. Indeed, when I run a targeted internet search on Google Scholar I get back so many hits that I could get lost in the reading for hours.
But educational studies on the effectiveness of different classroom sizes is much sparser. Most who even indirectly monitor this are on the fence that reliable quantitative studies exist for classroom size studies, or that the studies that do exist exhibit any strong patterns.
And yet, the anecdotal evidence by practitioners is overwhelming. For *whatever* reason, professors greatly prefer teaching in small classrooms over large ones. When students are polled they say the same thing.
But I had 15 minutes to do some new searches this afternoon, and came across this peach from 2010 that I had not seen before.
"Lost in a Crowd: Anonymity and Incivility in the Accounting Classroom", by Elder, Sweaton and Swinney.
http://aejournal.com/ojs/index.php/aej/article/view/153/93
Quote
"...we present statistically significant evidence that incivility is indeed higher in large accounting classrooms than
in small accounting classrooms. As hypothesized, the results of our analysis indicate that the level of incivility is
higher in the anonymous setting of the large classroom. Our quantitative results support descriptive accounts in the
literature that linked incivility and the large classroom (Harris, 2006; Indiana University, 2000; Sorcinelli, 1994).
Our results do not support the findings of Meyers et al. (2006) who reported that class conflict was not related to
class size. The average class size reported by their respondents, however, was only thirty-seven students."
And they this have this beautiful table listing examples of "Irresponsible student behaviors" that they examined. I'm keeping this list for reference, ha ha.
Irresponsible Student Behaviorsf. Sleeping in class
g. Not paying attention in class
h. Not taking notes during class
i. Conversation distracting other students
j. Conversation distracting you
k. Reluctance to answer direct questions
l. Using a computer in class for purposes not related to the class
m. Cell phone or pager disruptions during class
n. Arriving late for class
o. Coming and going during class
p. Leaving early from class
q. Cutting class
r. Being unprepared for class
s. Creating tension by dominating discussion
t. Cheating on exams or quizzes
u. Demanding make-up exams, extensions, grade changes, or special favors
v. Taunting or belittling other students
w. Challenging your knowledge or credibility in class?
Quote from: Aster on November 18, 2019, 01:21:46 PM
Quote from: marshwiggle on November 18, 2019, 10:47:14 AM
Quote from: Aster on November 18, 2019, 10:28:03 AM
This is very much how much of social media operates. With a heightened environment of detachment and anonymity (or even the perception of anonymity), there is a corresponding loss of responsibility and accountability.
Whereas in a small-medium classroom, students who are disengaged/distracted are far more likely to feel like they're standing out by burying themselves in their smartphone apps, listening to music, sleeping, playing video games, etc...
Do you know of any research to document this?
The anonymity thing (as it pertains to social media encouraging bad personal behaviors) has been discussed extensively in the regular media ever since internet chat rooms came into widespread usage. Indeed, when I run a targeted internet search on Google Scholar I get back so many hits that I could get lost in the reading for hours.
But educational studies on the effectiveness of different classroom sizes is much sparser. Most who even indirectly monitor this are on the fence that reliable quantitative studies exist for classroom size studies, or that the studies that do exist exhibit any strong patterns.
And yet, the anecdotal evidence by practitioners is overwhelming. For *whatever* reason, professors greatly prefer teaching in small classrooms over large ones. When students are polled they say the same thing.
Sure, but they probably also prefer windows, desks or tables (rather than the chair with side-desk things), and so on. If there were any evidence it significantly affects student
performance you'd expect there'd be
lots of published stuff about it.
Quote
But I had 15 minutes to do some new searches this afternoon, and came across this peach from 2010 that I had not seen before.
"Lost in a Crowd: Anonymity and Incivility in the Accounting Classroom", by Elder, Sweaton and Swinney.
http://aejournal.com/ojs/index.php/aej/article/view/153/93
Quote
"...we present statistically significant evidence that incivility is indeed higher in large accounting classrooms than
in small accounting classrooms. As hypothesized, the results of our analysis indicate that the level of incivility is
higher in the anonymous setting of the large classroom. Our quantitative results support descriptive accounts in the
literature that linked incivility and the large classroom (Harris, 2006; Indiana University, 2000; Sorcinelli, 1994).
Our results do not support the findings of Meyers et al. (2006) who reported that class conflict was not related to
class size. The average class size reported by their respondents, however, was only thirty-seven students."
And they this have this beautiful table listing examples of "Irresponsible student behaviors" that they examined. I'm keeping this list for reference, ha ha.
Irresponsible Student Behaviors
f. Sleeping in class
g. Not paying attention in class
h. Not taking notes during class
i. Conversation distracting other students
j. Conversation distracting you
k. Reluctance to answer direct questions
l. Using a computer in class for purposes not related to the class
m. Cell phone or pager disruptions during class
n. Arriving late for class
o. Coming and going during class
p. Leaving early from class
q. Cutting class
r. Being unprepared for class
s. Creating tension by dominating discussion
t. Cheating on exams or quizzes
u. Demanding make-up exams, extensions, grade changes, or special favors
v. Taunting or belittling other students
w. Challenging your knowledge or credibility in class?
That's something, but again, one would expect to see some result in terms of final
grades if the lecture experience is intimately tied to student learning.
Quote from: marshwiggle on November 18, 2019, 01:39:39 PM
Sure, but they probably also prefer windows, desks or tables (rather than the chair with side-desk things), and so on. If there were any evidence it significantly affects student performance you'd expect there'd be lots of published stuff about it.
This makes interesting assumptions about education research. Like how much there really is in Higher Education. It's not nearly as much as people think there is. Or how useful the results of these studies are. Most studies do not show clear patterns to anything. And the ones that do are commonly argued to suffer high researcher bias. There are reasons for this. Educational research in Higher Educations is difficult to do. It is very difficult to set up with decent sample sizes. There are very limited choices for what can even be measured. Your typical education study in Higher Education will be one professor comparing one course section to another course section, with n's of less than 100. A less common education study may include 2-5 professors and scale up to maybe several course sections in a single academic term, with n's under 500. And in nearly all cases, the research will be confined to a single course type, at a single college, and not repeated. And if people do publish, it usually ends up in very obscure, 4th tier journals that nobody has ever heard about.
Quote
That's something, but again, one would expect to see some result in terms of final grades if the lecture experience is intimately tied to student learning.
This also makes interesting assumptions about education research. What little there is pertaining specifically to Higher Education, is mostly evaluated to student and faculty polling responses. There is a minority of research utilizing "hard numbers" like assessment scores. And even in the latter cases, the natural range of student scores is often very high even before a researcher starts to even fiddle around with independent variables.
Educational research is mostly a social science, and expecting for clear, significant patterns of statistical significance is going to routinely disappoint. The disdain that so many professional researchers in other disciplines have for educational research is directly tied to educational professors being notoriously known for making (or clinging to) wild, poorly tested, or even long-debunked assumptions about learning. But then when those non-education professors cut the education professors out of the loop and "run the experiment right", results tend to be very disappointing. There aren't conclusive results. There aren't significant results. It's a real downer.
And this is why we still overwhelmingly rely on our individual experiences, the experiences of our colleagues, and our professional training to guide our pedagogies. The science of learning itself is messy, confusing, contradictory, and not at all agreed upon. If one is really interested in self-improvement as an educator, my recommendation is to learn best by gleaning through the massed anecdotal accounts of many, many professors. One of the top places to get those accounts is on the old CHE forums, here on the new forums, or from the comments sections from Inside Higher Ed.
Quote from: Aster on November 19, 2019, 05:56:12 AM
Educational research is mostly a social science, and expecting for clear, significant patterns of statistical significance is going to routinely disappoint. The disdain that so many professional researchers in other disciplines have for educational research is directly tied to educational professors being notoriously known for making (or clinging to) wild, poorly tested, or even long-debunked assumptions about learning. But then when those non-education professors cut the education professors out of the loop and "run the experiment right", results tend to be very disappointing. There aren't conclusive results. There aren't significant results. It's a real downer.
In this regard, class sizes seems like "learning styles". Since people clearly have obvious
preferences, it seems intuitively that there should be some measurable correlation with outcomes. (Although I recently heard of research showing that students
felt better in a traditional lecture than they did in an active learning setting, even though their test results were higher in the latter case. The obvious conclusion is that learning requires effort, and so when it's more "effortless" there's less actual learning. Maybe something similar is happening with class size; the more comfortable settings make it
seem like there's more learning happening. Maybe that's the paradox of "learning styles".)
Isolating variables is certainly difficult, but does it matter that much? Specifically, if some sort of highly controlled experiment showed a difference of 5% in learning between one setting and another, that would be barely detectable in the real world. Something like exam format would have a massively bigger effect.
Quote from: marshwiggle on November 19, 2019, 06:23:46 AM
Isolating variables is certainly difficult, but does it matter that much? Specifically, if some sort of highly controlled experiment showed a difference of 5% in learning between one setting and another, that would be barely detectable in the real world. Something like exam format would have a massively bigger effect.
I basically agree with this in a narrow sense. Internal, not external factors mostly determine how well students do in a class and how much they learn in it. Talent and work ethic in some combination are obviously going to matter a lot more than the size of the class, or what particular style of teaching is used for the majority of students. I wouldn't say that means these things don't matter, because small differences add up.
I also don't think that objective measures of how much students learn in a class are the end all and be all of education. It also matters whether students can see the relevance of the material, continue to apply it in future classes and incorporate it into their larger base of understanding and knowledge. This is where teaching styles, competence of the instructor, and settings that allow for accountability and interaction really do matter. Just because these things aren't easy to measure doesn't mean they don't exist or that they aren't important.
Quote from: marshwiggle on November 19, 2019, 06:23:46 AM
Although I recently heard of research showing that students felt better in a traditional lecture than they did in an active learning setting, even though their test results were higher in the latter case. The obvious conclusion is that learning requires effort, and so when it's more "effortless" there's less actual learning.
I'd be interested in seeing some of this research. I was in a calligraphy workshop some months ago, taught by an undisputed, world-renowned expert in this particular script. But he was a
terrible teacher, and spent all his time showing extremely advanced technique on a visualizer at the front of the classroom, rather than having us practice the actual script and giving us personalized feedback. I commented to someone else in the class about how disappointed I was that I was getting nothing that I couldn't see on youtube (except youtube gives better image quality and the ability to slow down and replay things), and she vehemently disagreed. She said that she would be too nervous to practice or show him her actual work, and she preferred just watching him while sitting quietly in her seat. I'm still bemused by this exchange, and by the way this classmate couldn't see how god-awful a teacher he was--especially since we'd both been at a similar workshop the previous summer taught be someone who was head and shoulders and knees and ankles above him in teaching abilities. She would honestly have preferred to pay hundreds of dollars to watch him show off than to get actual instruction.
Quote from: ergative on November 20, 2019, 06:32:38 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on November 19, 2019, 06:23:46 AM
Although I recently heard of research showing that students felt better in a traditional lecture than they did in an active learning setting, even though their test results were higher in the latter case. The obvious conclusion is that learning requires effort, and so when it's more "effortless" there's less actual learning.
I'd be interested in seeing some of this research.
Here's the article: Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom (https://www.pnas.org/content/116/39/19251)
From the abstract:
Quote
Comparing passive lectures with active learning using a randomized experimental approach and identical course materials, we find that students in the active classroom learn more, but they feel like they learn less. We show that this negative correlation is caused in part by the increased cognitive effort required during active learning.
Quote
I was in a calligraphy workshop some months ago, taught by an undisputed, world-renowned expert in this particular script. But he was a terrible teacher, and spent all his time showing extremely advanced technique on a visualizer at the front of the classroom, rather than having us practice the actual script and giving us personalized feedback. I commented to someone else in the class about how disappointed I was that I was getting nothing that I couldn't see on youtube (except youtube gives better image quality and the ability to slow down and replay things), and she vehemently disagreed. She said that she would be too nervous to practice or show him her actual work, and she preferred just watching him while sitting quietly in her seat. I'm still bemused by this exchange, and by the way this classmate couldn't see how god-awful a teacher he was--especially since we'd both been at a similar workshop the previous summer taught be someone who was head and shoulders and knees and ankles above him in teaching abilities. She would honestly have preferred to pay hundreds of dollars to watch him show off than to get actual instruction.
I think we like to see someone "make something look easy" since we can tell ourselves we could do it too. Ironically, the very fact that it looks easy reflects how skilled they are and so we're not going to come close.
Quote from: marshwiggle on November 20, 2019, 07:21:26 AM
Here's the article: Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom (https://www.pnas.org/content/116/39/19251)
Thanks for sharing this! A colleague and I are currently conducting a similar study and the results presented in that paper support some of our suspicions. In particular, the following quote from the paper felt really close to home:
Quote
In our study, students in the actively taught groups had to struggle with their peers through difficult physics problems that they initially did not know how to solve. The cognitive effort involved in this type of instruction may make students frustrated and painfully aware of their lack of understanding, in contrast with fluent lectures that may serve to confirm students' inaccurately inflated perceptions of their own abilities. (Deslauriers et al. 2019 (https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1821936116))
I posted about this topic earlier and went back and read through this topic and it ended up changing from lecturing to research. I think I am going to pick certain students in the class to lead a discussion on a topic.