Blurts

It seems that alternatives to the lecture class (and books) are popular. Here is another reported in the Atlantic. I am an ex-lecturer (now retired) and textbook author so my take on these alternatives tends to regard them as naive, uninformed, or unlikely to scale. My own research focused on similar techniques required of students outside of the class situation. It always seemed a waste to take presentation time and give it over to “study”. Technology-based systems encouraging responses, reflection, writing, and other opportunities for individual processing of ideas seems better served as activities that can be flexibly scheduled.

Rather than “arguments” in general news sources, I would rather see data reported in a more careful manner. Higher ed should always welcome experimentation and the evaluation of new ideas.

One more comment. Negative reactions to the large lecture are hardly new. Every individual who has carefully followed this issue likely has their own example. Mine comes from an article published in 1967 entitled “Goodbye teacher” (Fred Keller). The notion was that lectures are poorly suited to the needs of individual students. The solution was to focus more on books as individuals can adapt the processing of written content according to personal needs (the issue of motivation never came up). If the lecture approach is so flawed, one wonders why it has survived. I ask this question without assuming we should know better. I would have enjoyed working with 25 students instead of 200. A smaller group and more interaction would have been my preference. One perspective I would encourage is to move away from a given course/situation and attempt to take a broader perspective. How do we keep costs down? Do we increase class size in some situations so that we can offer smaller classes in other situations? What purposes do we assume higher education should serve and how are these various purposes to be funded? My point – do not assume this issue can be addressed without understanding the impact a given decision would have in other areas.

I collect data sources on technology use. Here is a recent source for mobile web activity broken down by user age. Much of the data of this type are collected by marketing companies and not all is available for general use. This is an exception.

The strident arguments that all students must be coders or makers will likely be unproductive. For me, it is pretty much equivalent to the argument that all must play football or join the band. I just do not understand (unless I resort to political motives) how anyone can see universal value in any of these activities. What makes football or wrestling, or theater of value as school sponsored activities is likely that these activities offer opportunities to pursue personal passions. Coding and basketball were personal passions for me – theater and art were not. What is wrong with that?

See this post with a similar argument – Why extracurricular activities are essential.

You may or may not recognize Mozilla – the open source community responsible for many early Internet resources. The community continues in developing content and resources and offers this wiki related to the consideration of web literacy and responsibilities.

The Web Literacy Map is part of Mozilla’s ongoing goal to create a generation of webmakers – those who can not only elegantly consume but also write and participate on the web.

You may find this information useful as an instructional resource.