Tipping Education's Sacred Cow: Reconsidering the Lecture


Avi Zenilman writes in Slate magazine that the ubiquity of wifi networks on University campuses is wreaking havoc with one of education's most sacred institutions: the auditorium style lecture. Turns out, all those students assembled in the lecture hall aren't really listening to their Professor and using their laptops to take notes. Instead, they're (surprise!) reading e-maiil, surfing the web, and trading IMs. But while UCLA, Stanford, and other guardians of the past consider (to quote a Wall Street Journal article) "devices to block wireless access in the classroom after faculty complaints of out-of-control web surfing," Mr. Zenilman and others ponder a more revolutionary (but obvious?) approach: replace the lecture format itself with approaches that require students to actively engage and participate in their learning process.

The lecture -- especially the large, auditorium style format found at many of today's major Universities -- is the latest in a long list of education's sacred cows under attack. As traditional Universities continue to scramble to find ways to attract and retain students, many staples of the undergraduate experience are falling away. Students no longer wait in lines in gymnasiums to register for classes, nor do they live in concrete-walled dorm rooms outfitted like the local penitentiary. Instead, Universities are being forced to treat their students as (gasp!) discerning customers, customers who are increasingly selective in how they spend their educational dollars.

But while systems that let students register for classes from their cellphone and dorm rooms that offer the amenities of in an Embassy Suites hotel have become commonplace on campuses, the move to a true "learner-centered" University won't be complete until the last of education's industrial-model remnants falls away. Yes, as a recent Newsweek article discusses, providing lectures as on-demand "coursecasts" makes sense. (After all, why should a student be forced to attend a one-time lecture when she could listen to the same material in the dorm room, pause it to take notes, and replay it as needed?) But fundamentally, coursecasts are nothing more than improvements to a flawed system.

Educational psychology and Roger Shank continuously remind us that "learning by doing works; learning by telling doesn't." Even Avi Zenilman ponders in his Slate article that "perhaps the real problem with laptops in lectures isn't the laptops, but professors' over-reliance on the lecture as a learning tool." Maybe the time has come to replace -- and not just improve -- the didactic-lecture-to-captive-audience model of learning, and finally tip one of education's last standing sacred cows?

Posted: Sun - November 20, 2005 at 01:18 PM          

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