A student figures if they can get more or less the same grade paying attention in class as they would if they were also paying attention to setting up a meeting, chatting with a friend about the homework for another class and connecting with people on a website like Imgur – fulfilling social needs that they have more difficulty fulfilling because they already have so much to do – then what’s the point of solely paying attention in class?...A suggestion for the author of this column: Stick with your idea that people do what benefits them most. Now, explain the professors' behavior. Why do you think "something is seriously wrong" with what the professors are doing if they are doing what benefits them most? You said students were "not to blame," which means you don't think they are doing anything wrong, but your standard of right and wrong hangs on doing what comes naturally out of self interest. It's automatically already decided then, that the professors are also not to blame.
... I made a new friend last week because I saw she was viewing images on Imgur at CoffeeBytes. We talked and found out we are also in the same class together and majoring in journalism. Connection!
This same connection needs to be sought after by the professors who are lecturing. Learning is meant to be an activity. It’s meant to be created through interaction. It’s meant to be engaging....
Now, students naturally act on what benefits them most. If students are paying less attention to their professors and more attention to interacting with others online, then don’t you think something is seriously wrong with the way professors teach, and not the student?
Now, if you think I'm wrong, explain why I am wrong, and if you need to contradict any of your existing points, retract them explicitly.
There. Is that engaging?
Posts
94 comments:
Re: "We talked and found out we are also in the same class together and majoring in journalism."
Therein lies a big part of the problem: journalists, listening?
The Professor's ability to think and communicate with a logic that would make a Jesuit proud, once again triumphs.
What the hell do journalism professors teach? Political activism?
You seem to be suggesting that higher education is stale and moss-covered.
" but your standard of right and wrong hangs on doing what comes naturally out of self interest"
Somehow Althouse misses the obvious. Professors are paid to be there, hence their self interest is fulfilled. Students pay the professors, they are the customer.
The customer is always right.
betamax3000 said: Therein lies a big part of the problem: journalists, listening?
The real problem lies in the inability of journalists to think clearly.
pbAndjFellowRepublican, I think you need to delve more deeply into the question.
The students are eating candy instead of their vegetables -- isn't there something seriously wrong with vegetables?
Way off-topic: Scott Walker is on Meet the Press (NBC) right now.
If the professor is more challenging, and/or more interesting, then the students can't afford to side track.
My professor in Business School makes up a seating plan, and asks questions on previous night's assignments. He grades attentiveness, and takes off points for wrong answers.
I guess he assumes his best work will ever only be about C level - justifiably so based on his poor writing. It's scary to think he actually tried (engaged?) when writing that.
"Somehow Althouse misses the obvious. Professors are paid to be there, hence their self interest is fulfilled."
Um. Your theory that I missed that: Explain.
"Students pay the professors, they are the customer. The customer is always right."
Well, then, examine your own premises. The customer-student is paying a lot of money for this product — this product, not some other product that the customer-student is able to chat about. The customer buys this product. The market says yes to this product. The customer is able to imagine another product but is not refraining from buying this product.
I think you are the one missing the obvious.
You want me to make my points more sledgehammer-y so you can get them without paying much attention?
Ha! I say: Ha!!
Sure is some fine journalism that fellow is committing there.
Bob,
Are you suggesting that Althouse intended to show that, by removing performance pressures, tenure rewards lazy teaching because the professors know that they can get away w/ piss poor effort?
You may be right.
But, I doubt it.
pbAndjFellowRepublican said...
" Students pay the professors, they are the customer."
Once they enrolled, they are captured audience. They cannot walk away like "normal" customers.
Better analogy: Once we elected the president, we are stuck.
I'm sensing another theme day.
What we want vs what we need?
Learning to identify same?
It's not about what we think it's about?
"Students pay the professors, they are the customer. The customer is always right."
If only that were actually true -- most of the time, it is not *really* the student that is the customer.
A million years ago, when I was starting out my degree (first two years at a community college because I really *was* the customer) -- people used to piss and moan about the returning students who would wreck the curve.
Of course they wrecked the curve, they *were* the customer, they wrote the check, and they knew the real value of the product.
They won't make the same grade in my field at least (astronomy). Some professors in my department did a study and the students who surf the web or otherwise don't pay attention in introductory (non-major) astronomy classes average a full letter grade lower in their final grade than the ones who eschew electronics during lectures.
The latest Althouse update makes it clear that she was not targeting the market manipulation associated w/ tenure.
She's too close to see it.
Professor, your post is good, but mostly because it's vague. I'd suggest that you should indeed be more sledge-hammer-y, but that might not be the most audience-attracting bloggy style.
(Fascinating! when I type "hammer" and "y" without the hyphen, this edit box deletes the "y". Is it a racial slur or something? Hello, is this microphone working? Is that you, Ms. Napolitano?)
Dear Students,
You're in school because you don't know anything.
Sincerely,
AllenS, Esquire
I'm asking for a hyphen in "multitasking."
Needs a couple more options,
Not really, you have an crucial error in his and your thesis.
No, maybe the profs have some blame.
pbAndjFellowRepublican said...
but your standard of right and wrong hangs on doing what comes naturally out of self interest
Somehow Althouse misses the obvious. Professors are paid to be there, hence their self interest is fulfilled. Students pay the professors, they are the customer.
No, mostly the parents pay the profs.
And we're expecting 19 year olds to know what's in their self interest?
The average 19 year old is the biggest insurance risk on the planet.
And insane.
Multi-tasking is a myth, any number of studies show that.
The student's incentive is to maximize grades and minimize effort. This has little to do with teaching and learning.
Students love to be entertained in lecture. Stimulating, funny, interesting, those will get them to put their laptops and cell phones away. But having their attention is not having their engagement.
Very few of my students want to learn. They want credit for having learned so they can get a credential. Huge difference. If they can get the credential without having to learn, then why not spend time on other things?
What were you saying? I went over to the NWS website for Sullivan to look and see how much snow will fall tomorrow.
"Very few of my students want to learn. They want credit for having learned so they can get a credential. Huge difference. If they can get the credential without having to learn, then why not spend time on other things?"
As a teacher, you can put a lot of effort and energy into the intrinsic experience of the classroom experience itself, but the students will still worry about their own future, how they will do on the exam and so forth, so in some ways they actually prefer the more plodding spoon-feeding that doesn't require full attention. It's a dance for 2. The question is how to end it.
The seller-customer analogy is incomplete.
More accurately to say that the professor is supposed to be a servant, not a master.
The professor exists to serve the student. The professor exists for the students, the students do not exist for the professor.
But try to impress this humility upon professors, many of whom have delusions of god-hood, all the while "teaching" either by spending the period spouting their own personal opinions or reading out of the textbook.
The students have learned that they will get an adequate grade whether they are 'studiously' paying attention in class or multitasking/screwing around in class. So why bother to do more than is required to be adequate?
The professors have learned that no matter what scintillating or deep classroom presentations they make, the majority of the students are just going to screw around anyway.....So why bother to do all that work for the mere 1% of students (geeks) that really want to learn?
Instead of giving the lazy ass students difficult work and grading accordingly the course work is dumbed down. I don't know what kind of pressure, if any, there may be on the professors to keep grades up despite the quality of students or work. Surveys?? Pressure from administration?
Win/Win. Everyone takes the easy way out and the University can claim success!! Underpants Gnome College.
I remember A Biology Class I took in CC. One of those required science courses nobody likes, but still worth valuable matriculation credits and GPA value. Big lecture hall, 50-60 students. Professor as uncharismatic and dull as a bowling ball. Seemed like he was 100 yards away at the bottom of the amphitheater-like room. One day he gave a lecture regarding Modern History of Biology. He finished, then declared a "Pop-Quiz" and proceeded to distribute a 10 item questionnaire. "Galapagos" "Beagle" "Darwin" "England"... etc. A number of the students dropped the class by the following week.
The idea "students do not pay attention in class..." is as old as class itself. Personally, I could gauge my prior knowledge and interest in a subject/class, and behave in class in a manner that suited me. Humanities were the skate classes mostly. The Science and Math classes were a different story.
It depends on the individual’s abilities and interests, and perhaps their Major.
I have no experience in modern class dynamics, but would it be an outrage to prohibit the use of any laptop or gadgets in a College/University classroom setting? It isn't like the students can't set pen to paper. Would that be a protocol-breach too far? Or when practical, the Professor mobilize, and cruise the rows with a figurative wooden ruler?
The professor is supposed to be a teacher. A master. The student is supposed to be anxious to learn. They are supposed to be those things in order to pass on what is known and encourage finding out what isn't yet known.
What this writer/journalist is babbling on about is something completely different. There is very little about school these days that approaches the purpose of education.
The prof's interest is not necessarily served by best teaching. Prof's motivation is inelastic. Prof is not paid by students but by school. Prof is doubtless highly responsive to inputs from school. Students pay school but school is not highly responsive to student inputs, or is it?
If prof needs feedback to be incented, by removal of tenure, bonuses/penalties, best/worst assignments, ego +- due to perceived student attention, it should be more responsive/dynamic than a one-time up/down tenure vote, or evaluations by people prof does not respect.
Competition, somehow injected into this mix, would probably solve the problem, although I suppose that verges on dogma. But, as in the movie Blazing Saddles, a true solution would probably imperil lots of phony-baloney jobs. There is a system and those within the system have pledged fealty to the system and now benefit from the system and my god, why change the system now?!?
Students are "trainees", when in the classroom, not "customers".
The journalist confuses the two to justify her assertion.
"The professor exists to serve the student. The professor exists for the students, the students do not exist for the professor."
That's certainly incorrect for a law professor, especially at Wisconsin where students graduate with the "diploma privilege" and don't even take a bar exam (if they stay in Wisconsin).
We have an obvious and strong duty toward the people who will take our degree to signify competence in lawyering and who will rely on our graduates.
There is also a strong duty to the discipline itself and to the truth.
Adhering to these duties should also serve the student, but the idea that we "exist for the student" is not correct and if followed would distort education.
Just about every day in class, I can see that I could make everybody happier by lying about the case law.
If I had to complete the sentence "Professors at the University of Wisconsin exist for ____________," I would go with: the people of Wisconsin.
"If I had to complete the sentence "Professors at the University of Wisconsin exist for ____________," I would go with: the people of Wisconsin."
There are problems with that answer, but I'm just saying if I had to fill in that blank.
If a professor thinks only of the students in the room and not the clients out there in the future when those future lawyers are not under supervision, that is a terrible ethical lapse.
The professor is supposed to be a teacher. A master.
The One who really is The Teacher taught that it was necessary for Him to be a servant, going beyond getting down on his hands and knees to wash his student's feet to lay down His life for them.
And today's professor is NOT greater than Him, even though they think they are.
That's why some professors are adopting the flipped classroom. Do the reading on your own, take the online mastery quiz to earn your ability to attend class and do an interactive, applied exercise using the knowledge you just gained.
I wasn't clear...the interactive, applied exercise is done during class time.
For consistency I need to edit Atlhosue:
""If I had to complete the sentence "Professors at the University of Wisconsin exist for ____________," I would go with: making sure nobody is multi-tasking in class."
Althouse's duty to truth and lawyering requires her to oppose multi-tasking in class. Duh.
The major life adjustment comes when those young punkins graduate and go to work in the real world.
Computer professor friend was hired to observe and log a young bank vice president's behavior during the work day.
It was largely taken up with texting on his personal cell phone. He ignored the ringing office telephone and requests to come visit with customers.
Texting with his buddies was more important.
Ergo, he was fired instantly. He lost a $40k starting salary bank VP job he got straight out of college, in a poor Appalachian small town. Now he's a fast food counter clerk.
"Professors at the University of Wisconsin exist for the glory of God," which along with enjoying God forever is the chief end of human kind. Whether they live up to their God-created purpose and destiny is another matter.
"It was largely taken up with texting on his personal cell phone. He ignored the ringing office telephone and requests to come visit with customers."
This supports the columnist's POV. It is important to learn how to web multi-task and get your work done.
Now, students naturally act on what benefits them most. If students are paying less attention to their professors and more attention to interacting with others online, then don’t you think something is seriously wrong with the way professors teach, and not the student? Salman Khan, founder of the Khan Academy, says, “Ironically, by removing lecture from class time, we can make classrooms more engaging and human.”
This reminds me of the scene in Fast Times At Ridgement High where Spicoli orders a pizza in the middle of Mr. Hands class.
Jeff Spicoli: I've been thinking about this, Mr. Hand. If I'm here and you're here, doesn't that make it our time? Certainly, there's nothing wrong with a little feast on our time.
Mr. Hand: [takes away box of pizza from Spicoli] You're absolutrly right, Mr. Spicoli. It is our time. Yours, mine and everyone else's in this room. But it is my class.
[calls up a couple of students]
Mr. Hand: Mr. Spicoli has been kind enough to bring us a snack. Be my guest. Help yourselves. Get a Good one.
I mean, if I'm hungry and acting out of what benefits me most then ordering a pizza in the middle of the class is certainly feasible.
Only, it's not Our Time. You are in a teachers class. Show some respect.
I do like Mr. Hands approach where he gives the class the pizza ordered by Jeff. Teachers can do stuff like that to disrupt the disrupters.
By the way, multitasking doesn't really work. You are diverting attention from one thing to another in very short increments, giving both things you are concentrating on short thrift. So if kids or students think that them surfing the web or chatting is just them multitasking well, they are not really devoting attention to the class.
How about if a teacher just puts on a video and then reads his/her paper and the kids can either watch it or go online and chat with their friends?
How about if the teacher is on the phone chatting with his friends while he is teaching the class so stops what he's doing every few minutes to check his email or view his favorite sites.
SOmething tells me we would be hammering the teacher for not actually teaching.But if you're not engaged and talking to your friends, you're not actually learning.
The student, in her own airheaded way, has an important insight. The classroom experience has to add value beyond the online experience in order to justify the classroom's existence.
This blog has paid a lot of attention of the growth of free online education and its implications for the future of colleges. Well, a clear implication is that there's no longer any real point to having a second-rate prof stand in front of a group of people who could be looking at their tablets watching a first-rate prof lecture on the same topic.
Direct engagement w/ students is what will save brick-and-mortar colleges. Even a ditz like this girl gets that.
Maybe Althouse can only fulfill her duty to cheese-headdom if she encourages multi-info-absorbtion.
In the in-person class I teach (to new college students who have multiple developmental course placements and therefore lack basic academic skills), my syllabus prohibits use of cell phones, texting, electronic devices for non-class purposes during class time. Texting or surfing off topic during class = they are counted absent for the day, because they aren't there mentally. I am trying to train them up in good habits this way so they don't text or surf off topic during any of their classes during college. I teach them that professors in all their classes expect their full attention and it's rude to text or surf off topic.
Large universities have cell phone jammers for test security purposes in the big lecture halls. Perhaps they should flip on the jammers during lecture, too.
LIEBKIND: You shut up! I'm the author. You're just the audience. I outrank you.
--The Producers
I tried out a PhD program that was a weekend program for college teachers and administrators. The old guy lecturing was so slow and monotone. I am accustomed to a high rate of info absorption. So, we were in a computer lab. I'd sign on and surf online about the topics he was lecturing about, so I'd enrich the information I was consuming. I was on topic, not distracted.
He chewed me out and dressed me down in class in front of everybody and I didn't have a chance to speak up for myself. So I quit and never went back.
Really, they should have had me hooked up to a projector and compiling the links as a resource to send to my colleagues.
It would have enriched everyone's educational experience.
That program fizzled. No one finished. My exit was the first off ramp among many.
Really, they should have had me hooked up to a projector and compiling the links as a resource to send to my colleagues.
If you have an online classroom, it's pretty easy for kids to make a wiki about the topic of the day you are talking about, and provide links as well as a critique of how good the link is, all during class. It's a great in-class learning tool. They have to pay attention to what you are saying as well as to what they are seeing on their screens.
a lecture hall.400 students.a Chinese prof who spoke softly with a pronounced accent.Tests thaf had little relation to the text. Why shouldn't I spend my time connecting with other students or the two Indian TA who graded the tests?By the way I ended up haunting the computer lab at 3AM to pass the course.Life of an Engineering student
Diff Eqs class.125 students.Lectures consisting of simply completing 1 sample problem from the 20 assigned problems every night.Average time expenditure per classroom hour was 4-6hours.Profs teaching load was 6 hours per week.I was taking 18 hours per week.And people wonder why Engineers might be geeky.Oh yeah average BS or BA outside engineering was 186 quarter hours.Average BS in Eng was 220.Financial Aid was set up for 4 years.The successful graduate averaged 5.5.
Professors at the University of Wisconsin exist for ____________
I'd go with eye candy, but then I've only seen a very small sample.
Jeff, are you complaining or bragging? It's hard to tell.
It's distracting to other students.
I'm not sure if there is anything more to it than that. And no, it's not the same if someone has a word processor up and is taking notes as if they are clicking through pictures and websites.
It's distracting in a way that, for example, the girl sitting next to me writing fan fiction on a paper tablet, isn't.
I don't think that anyone should be made to listen or made to take notes a certain way. It's college, after all.
When I was in college, if the lectures weren't going to present anything I couldn't learn from the readings, I just quit going to lectures. It's more respectful.
I had one prof who literally read the textbook, after putting up examples from the textbook on the chalkboard. I showed up to the lectures because there was a cute young lady I was flirting with. Otherwise, I'd have shown up only to take exams.
MM hard to know but sure explains why there are so many used-to-be Eng students.And it sure wasn't fun cracking the books every night and weekend while the Lib Arts and Bus majors were partying .And finishing in four years.
Jeff Teal,
I got a MechE degree at UC/Berkeley, and I certainly don't recall spending 18 hours a week on a single course. Really?
If you have a professor who speaks softly, and/or has a pronounced accent that makes his/her English difficult to understand, you sit as close to the front as you can and pay attention. And if the tests don't follow the text, it might possibly be -- just a theory, mind you -- because they followed the lectures that you weren't paying much attention to. Just sayin'.
My analysis of this problem follows as such:
1. The two principle parties, the college and the student, are serving their self interest.
a. Students want the most benefit for the least work. The credential is all they want. In general they will perform the minimum to achieve that goal.
b. Colleges get paid by billing students for credit hours. So in order to produce a "balanced" education students get to take about half of their classes which are totally unrelated to their field. General education requirements probably suffer most from this issue.
2. The beneficiaries of these degrees are not the people paying for it because of government subsidies making education "free."(In the sense that any government program is "free")
a. Students just go to the financial aid official once a quarter/semester and don't realize the crippling debt they are signing up for.
b. Employers don't pay for it, and now have a huge pool of over educated applicants. Most applicants will be trained in their new position anyway.
What are the incentives created here? This is the key part.
For students they need the credential, and they are not too interested in the cost because of the guaranteed debt with no limit or background check they get for "free." They try to get into the "best" most expensive school possible.
For colleges the people paying for the education are not holding them responsible for the end product. If employers were paying for the education there would be more scrutiny, but there isn't. Colleges force students to get about 2 years worth of garbage classes before they start taking classes in their field. General education requirements serve 2 functions for the school: more billable hours to the unseen payer and a chance to indoctrinate students in classes that are increasingly less than necessary.
What is the solution? Same as usual these days. End the government subsidy. I would change it to a system where companies/parents/students get matching funds to send employees/children/themselves to school. You have to make the end beneficiary of the product more attached to that product and the cost of the product or the product will never improve.
BaltoHvar,
I have no experience in modern class dynamics, but would it be an outrage to prohibit the use of any laptop or gadgets in a College/University classroom setting? It isn't like the students can't set pen to paper. Would that be a protocol-breach too far?
Professors have tried, but there's too much push-back most of the time. I understand that part of the problem is that the current crop of students barely know how to write or print with pen and paper, just as the generation before them no longer knew how to multiply or divide.
Me, I'd love a course where you were allowed only pen, paper, and (if it were at all mathematical) a compass, a protractor, and a slide rule.
Anthony,
When I was in college, if the lectures weren't going to present anything I couldn't learn from the readings, I just quit going to lectures. It's more respectful.
I had one prof who literally read the textbook, after putting up examples from the textbook on the chalkboard. I showed up to the lectures because there was a cute young lady I was flirting with. Otherwise, I'd have shown up only to take exams.
Now, that style of "teaching" is the one sort I'd feel justified in skipping class about. And I have seen it, though very rarely. It shows profound contempt for your students. There are few things more irritating to me than being given a handout at the beginning of a lecture and then having the lecturer read it out loud to the class, as though we were all illiterates.
kentuckyliz, re: the "flipped classroom," I'm currently taking an online course in copyright law that works very like that. Lectures are videotaped and streamed on our own time, reading is linked, and then there's a weekly discussion section (the only time we students interact with one another) where we hash out hypotheticals with our Teaching Fellow. In other words, absorbing the material is your responsibility, and making sure you know it is the TF's job in discussion.
I must say that my particular TF has been assiduous about that. She put up an impossibly complicated hypothetical last week, and now promises her best answers by email to each of us next week -- but only if we make a good-faith effort to answer the questions first. No posting, no answer key :-)
Thinking that a Professor is going to make you smarter or better educated is like thinking that a coach or personal trainer is going to make you more fit. The hard work is still up to you. (I laugh at discussions of "flipping" the classroom. If someone is only spending as much time outside the classroom as inside there isn't any hope for learning a seriously rigorous subject.)
I really enjoy giving lectures, but I can't claim to understand why they are so popular. And despite the student complaints, they are popular. Try actually doing something different like computer mediated instructions. Wait for the howls.
So we are stuck with the lecture format - at least for now - and it is wildly inefficient. You always have a class with a mix of talents. If you teach to the top you go over the heads of the rest. Teach to the bottom and the smart kids surfing the web have my sympathy. In the end it's mostly just a big pep rally to get them to bust their asses working on the problems. That's where the real learning takes place, but for some reason the eye contact of the lecture hall is important.
I do flipped classroom. Since my students won't read the book, or participate in the activities outside of class, we spend most of class time doing very simple things that they could have learned on their own if they had bothered. Such drawing two straight lines to locate an image. Which is, in my opinion, a waste of lecture time, since I could be teaching them to add fractions or do basic algebra--which they can't do either, even though they are in a calculus-based physics class.
What I teach needs to practiced for hours before you get good. My explaining it is like explaining how to drive or how to shoot a basketball. Without a great deal of practice, done on their own time, they won't learn it, any more than you can learn to play a piano by showing up occasionally to piano recitals.
How is it possible to get the same grade whether you pay attention or not? There used to be something called "standards." Maybe if teachers and students believed in what they were doing, they would come back.
The self-justification of a generation who believe they can "multi-task well" and think that actually listening to and paying sole attention to a teacher who is lecturing before them is antiquated and unnecessary.
In other words, they have developed no work ethic and want to play in class rather than focus on the course material.
Apparently, studies have repudiated the belief of young people that they can "multitask well" and in fact they do less well on tasks when they try to do several at once.
The collective attention span seems to have been destroyed by the omnipresence of media and devices that deliver media, and fewer people are prepared to apply their attention to one thing at a time and try to absorb it, digest it, learn it.
I was a "B" student overall in public school and a daydreamer. I didn't apply myself to material that bored me and I did just enough work to achieve that overall "B" average. I could have done better.
When I went to college, my parents were primarily paying for it, (aside from a little bit I contributed toward my living expenses from my income from summer jobs). This was in the 70s when it was feasible for a family with a middle class income to actually pay for college for their children. I felt that I owed it to my parents to work harder and do better simply because my parents were paying for me to be there. How could I justify their expenditure of money and come back with mediocre grades? (I did do better.)
Perhaps kids today who don't already feel a similar obligation to their parents need to be told by their parents that the obligation exists.
Now, students naturally act on what benefits them most.
Why would you assume this? Isn't it just as likely that students are inclined to do whatever feels best at the moment, and worry about the consequences later?
Learning is hard work. It takes attention and concentration, and offers no immediate payoff. It's just ludicrous to think that half of your mind is as good as the whole thing.
There's no amount of engagement by the professor that can replace engagement by the student.
Michelle the tests in that class were actually departmentally compiled so the TAs who actually did the Profs work had way more input than the Prof to the test.Second my course load was 18 qtr hours in NucEng.Oh and the lecture hall seated 400 with the minimum separation from the Prof of approx 30 feet.My course load rhat quarter was Quantum Physics,Electrical Circuit Analysis,Interacrion of Radiation and Matter,Fortran for Engineers, Diff Eqs, and my gimme NROTC course in celestial nav(pre GPS).
As a professor myself, I would much prefer that these students simply do not attend class, if they do not intend on participating. (Mind you, the classes I teach are small and require a high level of participation, unlike large lecture halls.) However, my reasoning applies to both types of classrooms: these students may think that they should be able to do what they want, bu when that interferes with and interrupts the learning of their fellow students (which text-messaging does), it is disrespectful and unacceptable.
Robert Cook @4:27 PM said...kids today
Libanius @ ca. 390 CE said...
‘When I start my lecture, they just carry on winking at one another and talking about charioteers, miming, horses, dancers, past or future fights. Even better: some stand around like statues, their arms crossed. Others pick their nose with both hands, yet others remain seated when many people jump to their feet enthusiastically; they force enthusiastic listeners to sit down, and others count the number of newcomers, while yet others stare at the leaves on the trees."
And yes 3 of those classes would have a hell of a lor easier if the Diff Eqs class had actually been listed as a pre-req instead of a co-req.It might also have been easier if the E-school(in central FL) had been air conditioned.But the athletic dorms were brand new.
If the professors run their courses in such a manner that students can goof off in class and still pass, the students will goof off in class.
I recommend that journalism students have as much fun in college as the can while avoiding expulsion. Because after they graduate carrying half-a-house worth of nondischargeable debt and credentialed for disappearing jobs in a dying industry, they won't be having much fun for a good long while.
Yes, Chip, I am not unconscious that I have veered into Dana Carvey-esque "old crank" territory. What can I say? I am an old crank!
The social connections I made at the university I attended ultimately did me a lot more good than the actual education I received.
I do think that high school students are busier now on account of societal and looking-ahead-to-college-attendance expectations, on average, at least middle-class ones, than back in the day.
What I do NOT buy is that there are higher expectations for your average college student. I simply do not. Neither evidence nor what I can observe for myself supports that. Moreover, to the degree it is true, there's quite a payoff in exchange in terms of lifestyle. In part, that is the problem, by my lights, anyway.
Consider this:
In the end it's mostly just a big pep rally to get them to bust their asses working on the problems.
OK. So explain how and why this is bad.
That's where the real learning takes place, but for some reason the eye contact of the lecture hall is important.
Why might that be?
I'm going to say something that I suspect will be quite unpopular.
The professor's first responsibility is to the knowledge and material and the skills and to passing all of those on to the future.
However corrupted that might have become, and even how corruptible the very notion might be (because people fall short, sometimes mildly so, sometimes egregiously so, and too often unforgivably and execrably so), that is still the case and it still ought to be case, even if pretty much most of the relevant constituencies don't give a damn about that. It's to their own detriment and that of the future that those who don't, don't. They're tossing accountability onto the ash heap of history. How could there be no consequences, expected or otherwise, attached to that?
Many of the students in college should not be there. They should be working at some menial job until they are mature enough to benefit from college. End the subsidies. Costs will come down and payers will demand a better product and more participation.
While students may think they know where they are getting the most value, their behavior often indicates that they don't know when to postpone short term pleasures for long term gain. And we professors trying to adjust to the millennials often put lectures in power points on line, along with quizzes, assignments etc.so that students no longer have to pay attention and take notes in class, which I think is self- defeating. One good thing emerging from this is that when possible more class time is spent with hands on projects, or smaller learning groups working through major concepts-- not a bad thing.
Professor,
The topics in law school are far too complex to be covered in a few lectures. It's necessarily going to be watered down. Most learning will and must occur outside of the classroom. My experience is that unless the professor is a gifted speaker, I found that my time in the classroom detracted from my studying time and my proficiency at learning.
In hindsight, I think this was true of my undergraduate learning way back when as well.
Professors are not chosen for their ability to teach and speak, they are chosen through some other criteria that I can't fathom. If the so-called great universities were really institutions of learning, you'd think they'd be more interested in teaching. But instead, they are focused on ritualistic and formulaic class rooms and lectures that far too often have little bearing on how to teach to get students to learn.
Universities do not exist to teach. They exist to get money and create a reputation so that they can get more money.
The whole model of having people show up at X o'clock twice a week for 12 weeks to listen to Professor Y "lecture" is so old fashioned and unnecessary I don't know why its still required.
I skipped and dozed off in many a college class. Why? Because the amount of information being provided per minute was very low.
I'm taking classes now (today is the last day of spring break, too) and I think the whole change in how classes work from last time I went to college is so... ugh. The classes I have that are "old school" where you might have reading and are expected to participate but mostly you take notes on a lecture... I like those best. Listening and taking notes works better for me than reading and it always has. But now my eyesight isn't so good so it's tiring and frustrating to try to follow the text and explanations in the Chemistry text (or whatever). I have had three geology classes that didn't have books at all, and that's sort of irritating, but it's also great. If you go to class and take notes you're set.
But the big classes, the huge to-do's are like Chemistry. I've taken I don't know how many "learning" surveys and they always ask what is hardest to do on your own time and what is easiest to do on your own time and then give you bunches of homework on-line that is supposed to be done before the lecture and then you can't miss the lecture because there are in-class activities (even with more than 200 students). Because they've decided that acquiring new knowledge is the easiest thing to do on your own and "application" of that knowledge is something that is hardest. I'm the opposite. If I know the facts or the theory the application is trivial. Maybe I'm an unnatural person, but this "flipping" thing makes me completely nuts.
And you know... Khan Academy is like a lecture, so you do the lecture at home, so learning can be "flipped" because it's not throwing a text at you and saying "figure it out because learning completely new stuff is the easy part."
Synova, four things:
1) There's no such thing as one size fits all.
2) To the degree that not just educators but also the arbiters of cultural society at large currently embrace some variation of one size fits all, it will always be advantageous for those pursuing higher education to have adapted to the preferred skill set most relevantly at hand. (It will even be advantageous for those who aren't pursuing so-called higher education.)
3) It's a shame that the Khan Academy model doesn't work for you, especially given that there are a lot of kids out there who are being exposed to that as yet another education model to which they must adjust and therefore must learn how to navigate [within], in case it comes up. (Lots of homeschoolers, for example, have been exposed to that; I know that for a fact, and at first hand.)
4) Reading is *still* fundamental, in or out of a classroom. As is *doing*--and by that I don't mean hands-on stuff in a classroom. For the most part, that's no more "real life" than anything else in a classroom situation. In-class, hands-on aficionados are no less preening about their preferred choice than any others are, after all.
***
Here's an addition:
One of the most important parts of education is the opportunity--hell, the demand and the accountability--to learn how to learn in modes other than those most natural to and easy for you.
Many will disagree, I know. Many don't disagree (even if they don't recognize that right away).
If you do disagree, that's fine. But would consider saying why?
rcommal, I like Khan Academy.
What I was trying to say was that what Khan Academy IS a lecture.
So you can "flip" the classroom and have the lecture on your own time and work problems in class.
But in my Chem classes they're trying to "flip" the classroom by having you work the problems on your own, bang your head on that wall, go two different places on-line to do "homework" and bang your head on the wall and then go to class and work some more problems.
Of course, I'm slow and didn't realize until very recently that what everyone is doing is a google search on the questions and not actually *doing* the homework at all.
But they took away my lectures anyhow. Granted, yes, (and I know I sound super whiny) what I ought to do then is go to Khan Academy and watch my lectures... and wonder what it is I'm paying for exactly if Khan is doing the instructional work.
Actually... it's just the Chemistry department that is so very messed up at my school. The labs are based on the interesting plan of "lets be sure to not tell you how to do this experiment on purpose because actual instruction is out of the question."
My theory, overall, is that they're trying desperately to get people to pass Chemistry and nearly everyone has to take it so they're changing it to try to pass the liberal arts and ed major kids who simply don't and never will think in terms of "what does this mean?" when they learn a new fact, so they get this "learn the facts on your own and we'll TELL you what it means" thing going which I think is so entirely backward.
How can anyone do science at all if they don't naturally look for the connections and interactions and how new facts fit in with all the other ones?
It's like... we're not going to give you the puzzle pieces and expect you to fit them together, we're going to have you make those puzzle pieces yourself even though you don't know anything about it, and then help you put them together.
I don't think they do that in upper level science courses. Certainly they haven't in the ones I've taken in my major so far. Granted, none of those were in the Chemistry department.
Eh, just let the students dictate everything. Worked great in the 60s.
Maybe, professor, there should be apprenticeships in some subjects.
Like lawyering.
@rcommal -
I don't believe that the lecture hall as a pep rally is bad, and I did not mean to imply that. And I don't pretend to know why the human touch is so important to learning. Moreover, I don't trust anyone who thinks they know why (in anything more than a very shallow way.) What I do know is that if the observation is correct, it has important implications for the future of online learning and the hope for increased efficiency in education.
The assertion that students benefit most by letting their attention wander seems flawed. It's like saying a person benefits by binging on cupcakes instead of eating healthier food in that it confuses short-term benefit and long-term benefit.
Lots of worthwhile things are unpleasant in the short term; indeed, learning almost anything that's truly difficult is going to be unpleasant in the short term.
Yet doing these things can be beneficial in the long term. And it's not as if life is full of instances where short-term sacrifices can bring long-term gain.
Perhaps the real problem is the illusion that multitasking brings about real gains. Sometimes multitasking is necessary, but it almost always comes with a huge cost in productivity. Human attention remains a limited resource; it's not as if anyone has grown any more of it.
What I do know is that if the observation is correct, it has important implications for the future of online learning and the hope for increased efficiency in education.
Yes, it does.
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