Learning Not Lecturing

As teachers and professors move back to in-person classes and distance learning becomes a last resort for special circumstances and snow days, we will see what no video chat camera could really show. We will see firsthand how much students have been struggling and families have been in crisis. We must not avert our eyes and pretend that the pandemic never happened. It will be hard work, but if we do not do it, our students will pay the price. So it is incumbent on anyone in a classroom to really reflect on learning strategies that worked and didn’t work during our time apart and before. 

One strategy that needs revision is the lecture. I love this piece from Math With Bad Drawings. It is an “origin fable” about how lectures came to be. Lectures were the way that professors and other instructors conveyed their ideas to their students before there were any other means of doing so. When it was too difficult to produce material to read or enough copies for the class before any form of recording could be made when the students were wealthy white men who going to run the world anyway. In fact, lecturing may be the oldest teaching strategy we have! 

As I researched the effectiveness of lectures, I found many articles discussed how to deliver an effective lecture. The advice was almost always the same: have meaningful slides, using engaging questions, speak in an entertaining and dynamic manner, and so on. In other words, lecture is effective when it is accompanied by other effective techniques. Look at this website from Iowa State!

This article from Edtopia and this one from the Washington Post cite research that should make any educator reconsider the lecture. NPR reported about physics professors at Harvard and other colleges who realized that all they were doing was repeating what their teachers did and their students did not really understand the concepts. All they did was parrot back the lecture! 

The NPR article is an extension of a fascinating radio documentary by American Radio Works called “Don’t Lecture Me” about college lecturing and a college that decided not to use them. If your hackles are up and you are feeling defensive about the lecture, I urge you to listen to this. 

There is a place for lecture in education. Lectures, done well and done for brief amounts of time, can be a good teaching tool. As with many other areas, all generalizations are false: lectures are not universally problematic. 

However, I will argue that the vast majority of lectures are ineffective because the lecturer is not using dynamic teaching techniques. According to research cited in the radio documentary referenced above, only about 10% of students will learn well from a lecture, and it is likely that those students would teach themselves the material no matter how it was presented. Is it possible that the people who most benefit from lectures are the lecturers (and perhaps the institutions they work for)? 

The traditional college lecture in an enormous hall with hundreds of students feels like mass education gone horribly wrong. Let’s not even talk about the tuition cost to the students for such an experience. What is the rationale for not simply recording these lectures and allowing students to view them online? In fact, why not get all these lectures recorded and then allow the teachers to really teach or go do research? 

Maybe there is something else going on here. Many students might love lecturing because it asks so little of them. They don’t have to do anything but listen – and sometimes not even that. I have had many students who prefer not to think, but to just repeat what the teacher said. It is easier. 

If you visit a crowded lecture hall, you might see many students taking notes. You might see others surfing the web, texting, or doing other things. You might also see some who were sleeping. For many of these students, attending the lecture is performative anyway. The professor is only reading from a Powerpoint, which they later publish. Perhaps they even include notes. Students fully understand that they don’t need to see the show, they can just read the script. Is this a good use of their time and tuition dollars? 

Lecturing does make teachers and professors feel professorial. It is great to get up before an audience and show off. It feels good to have children praise and adore you for your knowledge and wit. Of course, they also expect that you will pay them for their worship with grades, preferably good ones. It is fun to have fans, but let’s be honest, impressing children for ego gratification feels low indeed. 

While brief and focused lectures may be necessary once in a while, teachers and students would be far better served if the classroom were a place where learning was interactive and engaging. We used to sit in a little red schoolhouse and write down our lessons with chalk on slates. We don’t do that anymore. Students now have access to every piece of information on the planet. Reciting it to them is far less useful than teaching them how to evaluate and create it. 

Come down from your stage, teacher, and help kids to make their own meaning, forge their own education: more than that special 10% will benefit  - and your lessons will have far-reaching impact.

Will We Still Zoom?

Slowly, things are opening up. I got a haircut, ate inside a restaurant, and shopped at Costco! Life is in person again (somewhat), and, slowly, it is feeling more normal. 

Yet the digital adaptations we made during this pandemic had advantages, too. The commute was fantastic. I loved being able to attend events wearing whatever I wanted. And those events were not restricted by geography.  

What parts of the digital quarantine will we keep? How will our immersion in Zoom and other video chat systems change now that it is safe to come together inside again (provided we are vaccinated)? 

We may see that many, if not most, events are hybrid. Some will merely stream so those who are not in the room can witness them. Others may go further and create ways that allow distant participants to be actively engaged. 

However, telepresence is not always an adequate substitute for physical presence; often, if you were on a screen and some of the other attendees are in person, you can become a second-class participant. Getting a word in is difficult when everyone is on Zoom. When some are sitting in a room and some are on Zoom, it is even harder for the Zoomers to cut into the conversation. While some meetings can be replaced this way, sometimes, traveling to be in person is going to be necessary. 

One of the most wonderful parts of Zoom culture was that participation was not hindered by geography or disability. I participate in a book club that now has members from all over the country. In addition, we have members who have physical difficulties that make attending in-person too challenging. Zoom lets everyone be together without the travails of travel. 

I attended a few virtual conventions. While I missed the social aspects, I thought the panels were great! Some of my pet peeves about panels vanish when they are on Zoom. My biggest pet peeve is that sometimes audience members think they are part of the panel. They speak up without being acknowledged by the moderator, comment freely, and often dominate discussion. Not on Zoom, they don’t! Audience members only get to participate when the moderator allows. I loved that. 

I also loved the commentary that went on in the chat during panels and events. I was used to sitting with my friends and whispering or texting each other occasionally. With Zoom, there is another layer of conversation that does not intrude on the primary event but can interact with it. I loved hearing, “Someone in the chat said…” or “An example of this was provided in the chat…” The audio/video was complemented by the text in the chat. It was a good outlet for that person who might be tempted to become the intrusive self-appointed panelist. 

Certainly, schools and colleges were changed by Zoom. While some may have liked learning online, getting back to “normal” school has been a primary goal. But might classes be streamed, especially large lecture-based classes in universities?  Since we can have remote and asynchronous learning days, does this mean school never needs to be canceled for snow or weather again? Could homebound students be connected to school resources through the computer?   

The fact that events could be recorded was also a benefit and one that we certainly could retain. Recently, I watched an interview from the Art Institute of Chicago that was streamed live during a time when I was unavailable. Since I was watching a recording, I couldn’t ask questions, but I am not sure I would have anyway. If not for the recording, I would have missed the event, but now I got to see it when it worked for my schedule. 

Accessing doctors and other medical resources by video was just starting to be offered before the pandemic. Now it has become a standard option for receiving services. For the same reason I noted above, telemedicine may not replace in-person examinations or consultations, but it certainly could help those who are too far away or for whom getting to the doctor is extremely challenging. And no one is sitting in a waiting room with sick people!  

I haven’t even begun to discuss how Zoom and its kin have facilitated the ability to work distantly for some. Zoom meetings, conferences, and calls are not perfect equivalents of the old normal, and they have both advantages and issues, but the option of working from home will be on the table far more than we ever imagined before the pandemic. 

Video engagement will now be an option for more and more of the activities that we used to assume had to be done in person. However, including disabled or distant participants, creating hybrid meeting structures, and navigating in-person events with both live and distant participants is going to take creativity and flexibility. 

We are not going back to the old normal. Our new routine will reflect the changes and innovations of the pandemic.  

Stop Beating Up The Kids!

Students don’t have a choice. They must be in school, and they are required to do what their teachers tell them or face the consequences. Educators have a choice.  Why do so many choose ineffective and outdated strategies that feel like torture? It is no wonder that kids see the rigor of school like rigor mortis: stiff and dead!

Let’s start with the way that many students receive their precious learning: lecture. While I like a good monologue, I usually can’t repeat more than a few lines even after I’ve just heard it. When so many better methods are available to communicate content to kids, why would a teacher drone and on and on? In high schools and colleges alike, there are countless instructors putting kids to sleep, reading their slides, reiterating the textbook, and missing the point. Educational research is clear: the lecture is the least effective way to teach kids. In small amounts, here and there, it can supplement other strategies, but it should never (yes, I wrote never) be the primary method of instruction. Lecture is the first refuge of the weak teacher who has no other teaching tools. It is the favorite of the self-indulgent teacher, who likes to perform and entertain rather than teach, and it is the sure fire way to kill student motivation and engagement. Shut up and teach!

An NPR story looked at how colleges from Maryland to Harvard are finding that the lecture is not effective even in their science classes. The Arizona University study cited in NPR’s story found that, “The traditional lecture-based physics course produces little or no change in most students' fundamental understanding of how the physical world works.”  The study’s author went on to state that, "The classes only seem to be really working for about 10 percent of the students…[a]nd I maintain, I think all the evidence indicates, that these 10 percent are the students that would learn it even without the instructor. They essentially learn it on their own.” So, lecturers, you are preaching to the choir.

And while we are discussing the lecture, why are many teachers obsessed with filling course with massive amounts of material? The lecture is long because the teacher has stuffed it with too much content. One has to wonder if whoever “designed” the curriculum could make choices, understood the subject well enough to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, or was far more enamored with the subject matter than with the idea of teaching it. In an age when almost any factual question can be researched in seconds using a device smaller than a piece of toast, is it so important to list them all on your PowerPoint slide, professor?

Once the kids have been subjected to archaic recitations of long lists of facts, they are then bludgeoned with tests. These tests are frequently so long that they are not only assessing students’ ability to regurgitate the material, but also if they can do so at breakneck speed. Tests at both high school and college level seem designed to trick and confuse even the most prepared students. Most of us don’t do our best work when we are rushing, yet countless students are evaluated this way.

Alfie Kohn, the renowned author of Punished By Rewards, noted in an article in the Washington Post that tests “are typically more about measuring the number of facts that have been crammed into students’ short-term memories than they are about assessing understanding.” Kohn goes on to note, “That’s why it’s so disconcerting to find teachers who are proud of their student-centered approach to instruction, who embrace active and interactive forms of learning, yet continue to rely on tests as the primary, or even sole, form of assessment in their classrooms.”

As I have noted in the past, grades are also used as a way to beat up students. Students who learn and demonstrate their learning throughout the term will get an averaged grade that penalizes them for learning because they were not proficient at the very beginning of class. Shouldn’t education change us? Shouldn’t we grow from the class? Shouldn’t the grade reflect that?

Assistant Professor Paul Thomas of Furman University sends his students an apology letter at the end of the term. He regrets having to give them a final grade, saying, “In my quest to honor the essential dignity of each one of you, then, I have fought the good fight against what I feel is deeply dehumanizing—grading.”

As the semester comes to a close, I examine each student and look at my record of his or her learning. I, too, wish that I did not have to reduce our wonderful process to a single letter. It devalues and diminishes the educational growth that has happened in our classroom. The best I can do is find a way to make the grade an aggregate of students’ proficiency in the skills we have practiced all the semester. How would you like eighteen weeks of your works to be reduced to a single letter? What does that say about what you have accomplished?

Good teachers work hard to foster their students’ learning. Good teachers carefully craft their lessons and assessments to facilitate student success. Lectures, overwhelming content, and dehumanizing and punitive grading are the antithesis of good education. Once upon a time, a long time ago, they were the only tools we had.  The old quotation (attributed to many) says that, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” Educators, stop nailing your students. It is time to use brave new tools!