Thursday, May 02, 2013

Ouch - Lectures "are doomed" according to @jimmy_wales

The BBC reported yesterday that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales says that the "boring university lecture is going to be the first major casualty of the rise in online learning in higher education". As I am  lecturer I was of course interested and concerned when somebody of Wales' stature makes a statement like this. In the article, Wales tells us about learning more about learning calculus from betamax tapes than from his "very boring and bad teacher". A few weeks ago I wrote about "Boring" Classes - You Can't Polish a Turnip, when one of my own students had come to me after class to tell me that he found the class "boring". So are lectures, and by extension lecturers, "doomed"?

Jimmy Wales.
Image Source: Wikipedia (of course!).
Well - I have to agree with Wales on this point - we are doomed if we keep doing what we have been doing for the last few hundred years. He tells us that "you're still likely to be in a large lecture hall with a very boring professor, and everyone knows it's not working very well. It's not even the best use of that professor's time or the audience". The more I do this job, the more I agree with this sentiment. On Monday last, 8 (out of a class of 68) students attended the last class this semester for one of my modules. On the same day my YouTube channel had 7,806 learners. You can guess which was the more productive, and satisfying.

While all professors/lecturers are not "boring", some of course are. We risk voting ourselves out of a job if we don't adapt and use technology more - and I'm not talking about simply using email and putting class notes up on Moodle/Blackboard. College authorities and management are shamefully lacking in initiative as they struggle with tighter budgets and increased demands of students (Wales calls this "a certain inertia in the system"). USA colleges are leading the way in accepting MOOCs and making lectures and content freely available on-line. The signs are slowly showing in Ireland that MOOCs are getting some attention with Sligo IT, UCD, and DIT recently announcing MOOCs. Many lecturers see MOOCs as a threat (I do), but many will embrace this and other on-line technologies (I do too).

Last word to Wales on the model of using recorded lectures, and class time for discussion: "It seems much more effective and is the direction I think we're going to go".

10 comments:

  1. If Wales is right, will see the end of lecture halls and theatre seating on building or renovation plans at universities?

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    1. Most certainly - I'd advocate flat rooms with pods and breakout areas for discussion, and retain a central lectern/projector when needed to aid discussion.

      E.

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  2. Wales perhaps maybe a little late to the discussion and only scratching the surface of a major discussion already raging across the US and now within congress.

    Look to University of Phoenix who are already raising from the ashes of ongoing change and transforming into a organisation with millions of global student outcomes already.

    http://www.phoenix.edu/programs/learning-formats.html

    The innovator of this thinking comes via Dr. Clayton Christensen – Disruptive Innovation in Higher Education

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUGn5ZdrDoU

    And then putting the cherry on top is Sir. Ken Robinson in changing paradigms in education

    Taking innovation into the class room now extends to the topic of 'class time' also, are we ready to embrace 'Class Flipping'?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etQJPG_CY78

    Backlink:
    http://www.thejobsfactory.ie

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    1. Hi Brendon - good points. UoP has been around a long time (at one stage was the largest university in the world), and a model that other colleges simply have not followed and ignored. Class flipping is here, but at undergraduate level this could be a problem as many feel that this could contribute to even worse attendance that we now have.

      E.

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  3. My experience is that students enjoy the 'event' aspect of a lecture, especially in a large class. Watching a long video of a difficult subject online isn't necessarily going to be more interesting, it may in fact be harder!
    In maths, I do a 'round robin' with students, where each gets to contribute to the next line, as I'm writing it.. It seems to keep 'em awake and motivated, not sure how that would work online
    Cormac

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  4. My experience is that students enjoy the 'event' aspect of a lecture, especially in a large class. Watching a long video of a difficult subject online isn't necessarily going to be more interesting, it may in fact be harder!
    In maths, I do a 'round robin' with students, where each gets to contribute to the next line, as I'm writing it.. It seems to keep 'em awake and motivated, not sure how that would work online

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    1. Thanks for the comment Cormac - can't see your "round robin" approach working very well on-line either. But it might with a wiki?

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  5. Yes, lectures are "doomed" as a teaching method. They are incredibly outdated as a means of education. Lectures put online, though, are at the cutting edge of innovation.

    Please.

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    1. Ernie,

      Apart from convenience of access, what would the difference be between a crap lecture in a traditional "outdated" face to face setting when compared to a crap lecture "put online"?

      Would you still consider the latter as "cutting edge" then?

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    2. @Anonymous, I think lectures need to be more like TED talks ...

      More informal and inviting
      More focus on a narrative as the delivery method for the learning
      More creative and innovative use of content, materials and delivery
      see http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_brown_on_creativity_and_play.html , [Accessed:11th June 2013]

      Put crap in the hands of a creative person and they will make fertiliser by with to encourage growth in learning :-)

      Just my 2 cents ...

      Backlink:
      http://www.thejobsfactory.ie

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