Without a lecture I'm going to have to read the material!

But then in 1990, he came across articles written by David Hestenes, a physicist at Arizona State. Hestenes got the idea for the series when a colleague came to him with a problem. The students in his introductory physics courses were not doing well: Semester after semester, the class average never got above about 40 percent.>

Well, there's your problem.

"Some professor is making an argument that lecturing reading off Powerpoint slides isn't effective as a teaching technique, but subby isn't absorbing any of it"

FTFY

There is nothing more powerful, inspirational and informative than a really good college lecture.

There is nothing more stultifyingly, soul-destroyingly awful than being trapped in a bad one.

Which is why I largely skipped lecture during college...

Do, view, hear.

Actually doing something is the best way to learn it. Seeing someone else do it is the next best. Hearing someone talking about doing it is the worst way to learn.

Now, not everything you might need to learn is going to be an activity you can do. "What were the underlying causes of the Hundred Years War?" There's not a lot of doing involved in that, unless you want to have your students roleplay out the various European nations and nobles involved in the series of conflicts. But then again, the purpose of the class shouldn't be to stuff your head with a collection of dry facts. Facts can be looked up. If you use facts frequently, you'll learn them. So how do you turn this into a fact-using, action-oriented class? That's where discussion comes into play.

Now, if you've got a lecture hall full of 200 students, there's no room for class discussion. So what do you do instead? Well, I'd recommend transferring to a smaller school.

//Went to a small school. "Lecture" classes had

Mr_Fabulous: There is nothing more powerful, inspirational and informative than a really good college lecture.

There is nothing more stultifyingly, soul-destroyingly awful than being trapped in a bad one.

True on both points.

Of all my college courses, one on materials science taught me the most - simply because the instructor was entertaining and engaging when lecturing. Sure, I could have just read the book but trust me, material science texts tend to be soporific.

I had whole semesters with no books and only lectures for the information. Some of the best lectures ever (and very cheap for class material). I also had lectures who only repeated what we would read later and were absolutely the biggest wastes of time ever.

t3knomanser: //Went to a small school. "Lecture" classes had

Bah, html entities. Lecture classes had less than 25 students and lab sections less than 20. Professors pitched epic biatches when the registrar exceeded those limits, and groups of professors would band together to move students between classes and sections, including cutting deals with students.

I learned alot from my lectures.

That's funny, because I've had lots of former students run into me and they usually pop off about something from one of my lectures


/sometimes at awkward times and places
/Your knowledge of Hawaiian kinship systems helped you get laid last summer?
/That's great. Now pour me another beer, please

He better hope so.

Now that university lectures in every area are offered for free online, the contemporary professor may soon find themselves becoming obsolete if that's all they offer.

t3knomanser: Do, view, hear.

Actually doing something is the best way to learn it. Seeing someone else do it is the next best. Hearing someone talking about doing it is the worst way to learn.

Not disputing that, but even lectures can be a passable way to learn if profs just learned how to do it dammit.

Even to this day I have to sit through presentations where an idiot reads a wall of text projected on the screen. I honestly don't know why thieves don't dress up as consultants. Brandish a weapon and you might subdue one victim. A badly designed PowerPoint can render everyone in a 30m x 30m room unconscious. Hell, there are non-lethal military weapons that are less effective.

I don't want to hang around for the whole thread so can someone lend me their notes later?

dragonchild: Not disputing that, but even lectures can be a passable way to learn if profs just learned how to do it dammit.

I always had an issue with the professors that come in with an ancient binder filled with their ancient lecture notes and plowed through the same song and dance for the 10,000th time.

Fail the snowflakes. The reason they're failing to learn isn't because lecture is a failed medium, but because the shiatforbrains don't spend any out-of-class effort on their work. Students spend an average of 12-14 hours a week on schoolwork. Including class time. Yeah, they can up that number a bit.

Give them hard homework that takes about 3 hours a week to complete. Tailor exams around the homework. And if they fail to succeed, fail them. Eventually, they'll realize that they're responsible for their own success and will either quit or bite the bullet.

Correction: 12-14 hours/week outside of class.

Citation: http://www.aei.org/article/education/higher-education/leisure-college- usa/

As a sophistry major, I found listening to the professor's lecture far more stimulating than listening to my fellow students embarrass themselves. In fact, I think I fell in love with the professor that announced on the first day of my 1000 level class that it did not fulfill the writing requirement because we didn't have opinions worth reading yet. Of course the guy was frequently acclaimed as one of the university's best professors, so I may have lucked out, but the others were all interesting too, except for the philosophy of mind types. For some reason they're uniformly twats.

Don't mind me. Just leaving this here. (new window)

How can one lecture and not talk about concepts? What have they been doing?

meddleRPI: Fail the snowflakes. The reason they're failing to learn isn't because lecture is a failed medium, but because the shiatforbrains don't spend any out-of-class effort on their work. Students spend an average of 12-14 hours a week on schoolwork. Including class time. Yeah, they can up that number a bit.

Give them hard homework that takes about 3 hours a week to complete. Tailor exams around the homework. And if they fail to succeed, fail them. Eventually, they'll realize that they're responsible for their own success and will either quit or bite the bullet.

They kind of have an obligation to give students a degree after they go in debt for 40k or whatnot. I'm all for making it extremely difficult to get degrees, but as long as money is tied up in things you have to give the customers what they paid for. Can you imagine the outrage if it truly was difficult to get a degree, and people were walking around with university debt and no degree to show for it?

J. Frank Parnell: meddleRPI: Fail the snowflakes. The reason they're failing to learn isn't because lecture is a failed medium, but because the shiatforbrains don't spend any out-of-class effort on their work. Students spend an average of 12-14 hours a week on schoolwork. Including class time. Yeah, they can up that number a bit.

Give them hard homework that takes about 3 hours a week to complete. Tailor exams around the homework. And if they fail to succeed, fail them. Eventually, they'll realize that they're responsible for their own success and will either quit or bite the bullet.

They kind of have an obligation to give students a degree after they go in debt for 40k or whatnot. I'm all for making it extremely difficult to get degrees, but as long as money is tied up in things you have to give the customers what they paid for. Can you imagine the outrage if it truly was difficult to get a degree, and people were walking around with university debt and no degree to show for it?

Asking students to do 40-48 hours/week of work isn't "truly difficult." It's called "what everyone else who isn't a coddled student does."

I think you missed my point. Every university is a degree mill, since you never see anyone leaving them without a degree. If they had any real interest in only allowing those with the very best understanding to get a degree, you wouldn't see everyone getting them. It would be common for people to tell you they spent 3 years taking chemistry or something, but had to give up in the 4th year because it was too complicated for them, and now they have nothing but debt to show for it all.

It's a business just like anything else. Do you think people would take out massive debt just for the slim chance to get a degree? No, they wouldn't. Everyone knows it's pretty much a lock you'll get a degree after ponying up the monies, no matter what university you attend.

LouDobbsAwaaaay: J. Frank Parnell: They kind of have an obligation to give students a degree after they go in debt for 40k or whatnot. I'm all for making it extremely difficult to get degrees, but as long as money is tied up in things you have to give the customers what they paid for. Can you imagine the outrage if it truly was difficult to get a degree, and people were walking around with university debt and no degree to show for it?

That's an awful argument. Who would pay $40k for a degree from a degree-mill that anybody can "graduate" from?

Two words: art school. And it's about $80k for some of the for-profit institutions. Ridiculous.

LouDobbsAwaaaay: According to this (new window), the overall US graduation rate for bachelor degrees within six years of starting college was a little over 55% in 2009. Just because you personally don't know anyone who dropped out of college doesn't mean it's rare.

I know lots of people who dropped out first year, which i assume those figures are referencing. They didn't drop out because they weren't smart enough to get a degree, though. They just decided they had better things to do, or weren't able to afford the full 4 years.

LouDobbsAwaaaay: I wouldn't think they'd be calculating over six years since starting college if they were referencing 1st-year dropouts.

They said "within six years of starting college".

I agree with his technique. More student interaction can be effective. But I remember being a physics major and LOVED watching a professor derive an equation from first priniciples, I would hope he still does that from time to time.

LouDobbsAwaaaay: J. Frank Parnell: I think you missed my point. Every university is a degree mill, since you never see anyone leaving them without a degree. If they had any real interest in only allowing those with the very best understanding to get a degree, you wouldn't see everyone getting them. It would be common for people to tell you they spent 3 years taking chemistry or something, but had to give up in the 4th year because it was too complicated for them, and now they have nothing but debt to show for it all.

According to this (new window), the overall US graduation rate for bachelor degrees within six years of starting college was a little over 55% in 2009. Just because you personally don't know anyone who dropped out of college doesn't mean it's rare.

It's a business just like anything else. Do you think people would take out massive debt just for the slim chance to get a degree? No, they wouldn't. Everyone knows it's pretty much a lock you'll get a degree after ponying up the monies, no matter what university you attend.

The choices aren't "it's a lock once you pay" and "a slim chance" - that's a False Dilemma Fallacy. People take out massive debt to get a degree because it's (a) attainable, and (b) necessary for many if not most skilled jobs these days. Your characterization is just plain wrong, sorry.

Again, if it's a lock once you pay tuition, why bother with four years of work to get the paper? Go online and buy a degree that same day for less than $1000. The business these places are in is an education, which requires an honest evaluation of your mastery of the subject. You can buy an unevaluated degree from the internet for far less than these universities demand.

Mastery of the subject would include a fundamental understanding of the field, which doesn't happen when you reward degrees to people who excel at regurgitating information. I've met a number of Master's level 'professionals', who didn't understand the basic concepts involved in their field. They could spout all of the proper terminology, but they didn't 'get it'.

I'd personally rather employ someone who 'got it' than someone who could recite well.

University lectures were invented when the ideas were still being discovered and the cost of a printed sheet of paper was $100 in today's money.

With the exception of lab work, education should have switched completely online a decade ago when broadband became cheap.

J. Frank Parnell: since you never see anyone leaving them without a degree.

Are you nuts? I know tons of people that dropped out after the first few semesters.

meddleRPI: Give them hard homework that takes about 3 hours a week to complete. Tailor exams around the homework

My Physics 1 prof at RIT did exactly this. 4 Homeworks a week (about an hour each to complete) with a 3 question quiz on Fridays (pulled from the hws with numbers changed). 3 Tests with 5 questions from the quizzes each. Got a 98 in the class.

My astronomy professor, speaking to me privately, said the rest of the physics department was concerned because they felt he was "leading us to the answers".

Still not sure what to think of that.

/the physics department at RIT is terrible.
//undergrad engineering is amazing... but you have to suffer through a year in the physics department. lifes full of tradeoffs i suppose.

The lecture is so you can claim you went over the material so the kids can't complain about your bullshiat test.

back in the early 80's I took a video based lecture course. I cannot imagine they could have found a more BORING instructor! I had to drop out of the class after 3 of the tapes.

I've purchased some of the "learning company"'s DVD lecture courses, and most of the instructors are very good, and keep the class going and lively (or as alive a recorded class can be), but... there is one instructor in the history department who says 3-5 words and then goes UUUUUUUUHHHHHHH so fricking annoying! Learn to SPEAK. You know? it's Like... really... UUUUUHHHH... just pause if you need to compose your thoughts!!! you do not need to vocalize each pause.

rant rant rant.

I hate it when speakers need to let us know they are pausing.