They've got another article from some fuddy-duddy prof who doesn't like the 21st century. It seems to be nothing but a long whine about modern teaching technologies — it's rather pathetic, actually, but the Chronicle seems to have a fondness for running occasional articles from defensive, confused Luddites. Here's an example:
Besides using the computer more in my classroom, the experts tell me that another way to transform my teaching persona is to put more of my course materials online. I can create a course that's more user-friendly and appealing to today's students by incorporating more Web-based elements. That could be as simple as placing my syllabi, lecture notes, and other course materials on my Web site — which would mean that I first have to get a Web site.
I'd say the best way to improve his teaching persona would be to have the snide ignorance extirpated from his brain. That's not what teaching technology is about, and I'd agree that if you substitute a computer for good pedagogy you lose. But with the right perspective — specifically, that technology is a tool that when used appropriately and with moderation can improve your ability to deliver information and can provide resources to help students get that information — it can help you teach. A fellow who's stymied at the thought of getting a website probably should not mess with it, though; he's kind of hopeless. He's at a university, so he's probably already got one and doesn't know it, and the university probably also provides software to simplify putting up simple web pages that, for instance, could archive reading assignments or help him maintain a gradebook.
It's no sin to not understand modern instructional technology, and lots of teachers can do a great job without it; it is damned stupid to mock teaching technology, though, when you're ignorant of what it is.
I'll let New Kid rip up the rest of the article, though. Some days the Chronicle just depresses me — it's like reading some blue-lettered broadsheet from the 1950s. Hey, maybe they ought to stop publishing it on the web and instead distribute it with a network of hand-cranked presses and stapled mimeo sheets!
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After 15 years away from my last spell of professing back in the days of classrooms with wrap-around blackboards, I once again taught a course fall semester of last year. While I'm reasonably tech savvy, I'm a pathetic n00b with computer-based media. Nevertheless, with some help from the bio department's resident geek I managed to actually get stuff online for the students and had one of those big wall display gizmos connected to my laptop every class meeting. It ain't that hard, folks. I even put the syllabus, handouts, some of the course readings, and the necessary simulation software on memory sticks to hand out to the students the first day of class. Made it fun.
Hey, I'm a pretty big Luddite, and I've not only embraced course websites but also (*gasp*) online teaching. Good teachers are always looking for tools that will help them achieve their pedagogical goals, even if they have to learn something new to use those tools.
I just don't need my cell phone to do more than place and receive calls and store phone numbers.
(Also, are you ripping on dittos? I miss dittos ... so purple and solvent scented!)
Ahh! The pooor Luddite!
Ah, getting high in elementary school...good times.
(aside: the hell is a ditto? oh god, technology has erased my pre-technology memories!)
seriously though - there's no excuse for not embracing the new stuff. (i know i speak as a CSD freak, but hey.) there are people in my department and amongst my classmates who couldn't put a blog up if Movable Type walked into their dorm, shook their hands and calmly served them coffee - i'm usually confronted in the lab by someone trying and failing to do things like put pictures in their MS Word thesis, and as of yet the English Lit department has about three online lecture notes between them. oy.
one day, people will look back on these times and go, "Ha ha ha, silly pre-hot swappable wetware users. What were they thinking?"
Lepht
"If you profess wear the badge "Teacher, Instructor, Professor, Educator" it is your obligation to understand the conduits of communication that are necessary to enlighten your audience. And...not every student can use the same conduit for enlightenment." paraphrased from Neil deGrasse Tyson
Are you advocating a return to open, radical drug use in the schools, Dr Free-Ride? I blame Nancy Reagan for the demise of the fragrant ditto.
you know, Lepht, ITites like you can be just as annoying as the Luddites
Here's my old poetry prof, in full Luddite mode regarding e-mail... http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~wilkins/writing/Resources/essays/dan…
And be sure to read my accompanying blog entry, so you get the full facts! It's the linked URL in my name for this comment.
I completed my first four-year undergraduate degree in 1997, and then went back for an after degree in 2001. I was completely amazed (if not slightly intimidated) by the amount of technology that had crept into the classroom by then.
After some initial griping about WebCT and how in my day we had to take our own notes by hand, I found that being able to download the syllabi, notes, and practice exams off the 'net freed up a heckuva lot of time during lectures. No more frantically copying chicken scratch off an overhead projector for me; I'd much rather print the notes off the night before and spend the lecture listening.
If you take away fragrant dittos and Mr. Sketch scented markers, it seems to me kids have little choice but to seek out something harder.
(And, has anyone done a study to determine whether paste-eating is a gateway to glue-sniffing?)
Oh, there was a drawback to all the new technology; as a TA it never occurred to me that I was supposed to be accessable via email 24 hours a day for the two days prior to the final exam, and some of the more disgruntled students noted that on my evaluation forms. Silly me; I thought I only had to be in my office during the posted office hours.
Now, in my day slackers had enough pride in their under-accomplishment not to expect the TA to bail them out for failing to study for the final.
Kids today, oy!
Check your Turbanian, Prof. Jenkins. Online stuff isn't even the future anymore; it's just another one of the things you do. So do it.
Sven, it's kind of generalist to label everyone who can use a computer to a tenth of its potential an ITite. that might be an appropriate label for me if i wasn't a. a specialist in the subject rather than a gadget-wielding twenty-five-year-old, and b. fully prepared to play tech support to whoever wants it. i spent three hours explaining Word to that guy, you know; i don't just flaunt knowledge for no reason.
Lepht
Ah, you're an expert. So sorry then to use my just-now-made-up but still apparently derogatory label on you. I'm sure you're not annoying at all.
But does it improve learning? Has the improvement been measured? Or should this teacher do it because "everyone else is doing it" ?
I'm skeptical that the increased availability of information means that people are imbibing it in greater quantities.
He's snarky toward his colleagues who incorporate technology in their classrooms, he's clearly contemptuous about the abilities of his students, and he hasn't updated his course in 20 years including references to a TV show that ended its run nearly 25 years ago.
And yet he's concerned about his rankings on ratemyprofessors.com.
I'm sure his course is a real joy to take.
i'm not gonna start a fight with you, Sven. you shouldn't have said it in the first place, period. you've got no reason to assume i'm "annoying" other than that i apparently know something about IT - if that annoys you, you're not gonna like what's coming in life.
Lepht
"I'm skeptical that the increased availability of information means that people are imbibing it in greater quantities."
Have you been a student recently? For people who are in front of a computer all the time, it is really, really nice to be able to access course policies, schedules, syllabi, and homework assignments online. Yes, the websites get used! In fact, that's what I would consider the minimum acceptable online presence for a college course.
Hm.
I guess I'm in the minority, because I would rather drill a hole in my head then listen to a lecture. I either understand the material, in which case I'm wasting my time listening, or I don't, in which case there's a good chance the material will be covered too quickly and I'll be left in the lurch, after which point I will be completely confused.
I think if more students were motivated, there wouldn't lectures at all. It's the slowest and most inefficient way to transmit information short of semaphore.
Brownian,
I fell into the "you should be available 24 hours a day" trap too. Now I tell the students that I don't check my e-mail after five the day before an exam or project due date. So far students haven't complained, but I do get a ton of e-mail between 4:45 and 5:00 on those days :)
Brownian,
I fell into the "you should be available 24 hours a day" trap too. Now I tell the students that I don't check my e-mail after five the day before an exam or project due date. So far students haven't complained, but I do get a ton of e-mail between 4:45 and 5:00 on those days :)
I can now, easily, present students with diagnostic images of terms and taxa in entomology courses, not to mention the old stand-by-- living specimens. Lastly, at the end of the semester, I can hand out CDs or newer media as it becomes dirt-cheap) of course lectures. I suspect that scientific illustration is a s-l-o-w-l-y dying profession.
The only problem with this easy access to information is that the recipients may have no conception or appreciation of the research behind the distilled material they receive in a classroom.
synapse wrote:
I agree that those things are convenient, but the question remains: do they increase learning? do more students actually complete homework assignments now that they're posted on the web? are more students prepared for class when syllabi are on the web?
I suspect not. My bet is that students use the web to slack off with keeping track of homework assigments or their paper syllabi. In other words, reduced effort rather than increased performance.
oops, sorry about the double post.
Whatever the effect of technology in the schools, it is having a huge effect on the way we learn.
Which is making schools progressively less relevant to their nominal role in our society by opening enormous new channels for learning.
Old Professor Fuddy-Duddy sounds like he would be delighted with the new innovations coming into teaching via technology, courtesy of Neil Bush (yes he is related)
No need to even be in the same room with the students/teachers he so obviously admires.
No child's behind left
(Armed Madhouse is a terrific book, and Karl Rove hates Greg Palast)
"I agree that those things are convenient, but the question remains: do they increase learning? do more students actually complete homework assignments now that they're posted on the web? are more students prepared for class when syllabi are on the web?"
They certainly increased my learning. I would have completed all the homework anyway, but having it on the web means that I didn't have to worry about copying down all the numbers correctly or keeping track of a piece of paper. It also means that the professor could fix or alter the assignment mid-week, and the students couldn't complain about not receiving the new assignment! Most of my courses posted lecture notes and slides before class, and I certainly printed those out so I could better concentrate on the lecture. I study biology, which is full of complex diagrams and pretty pictures, and I really couldn't transcribe (or even see from across the room) all the details during the lecture; it's nice to have those slides already printed out to annotate. Having copies of the notes and lectures was also immensely useful when studying. My classes tended to not follow a textbook, so having some other fixed, full-color, zoom-in-able reference was important, and the fastest and cheapest way to do that is to post the slides and lecture notes on the web.
synapse wrote:
I agree that having students copy down notes is worse than a waste of time. I long advocated that teachers just hand out the notes at the beginning of class, but I've only heard of one or two that actually did that.
I think synapse hit the nail on the head. From the my (the professor's) point of view, the new technology cuts way, way down on lame student excuses for now knowing what is going on. The nut-and-bolts information about what is going on in the class is available to the student anytime, day or not, from any online computer.
There are the hundreds of questions that I simply don't have to answer anymore. Didn't know the date of the exam? It was on the web. Lost the assignment? It was on the web. Don't know the attendance policy? Web. Lost the syllabus? Web. Where's your office? Web. Missed class and need the notes? Web.
Cutting out all these annoying questions has made my job a lot more pleasant.
"I agree that having students copy down notes is worse than a waste of time. I long advocated that teachers just hand out the notes at the beginning of class
Copying down words verbatim IS a waste of time, but that's true whether they're projected from PowerPoint, or an overhead, or written with calcium carbonate on slate. That's about pedagogy, not technology. Similarly, making notes available before a lecture is not dependent on the Web; back in the day we'd have to buy the "course packet" of xeroxed crap at the bookstore.
I don't do either one in my courses (biology). Taking good lecture notes is a key learning tool. It may be more convenient to have notes to annotate, and it may well free you up to "just listen," but I am certain that you learn the stuff better when you're taking notes (NOT copying words from a screen)--you have to remain engaged in the lecture. "Just listening" is conducive to daydreaming.
And you know what happens when detailed lecture notes are distributed? Class attendance drops like a rock.
Sven:
In my view, these are choices best left to the student. I post my class notes. Many students don't use them and copy things down in lecture anyway. The student has the choice rather than me having the choice.
About class attendance which "drops like a rock." Yes, it does go down a bit. So what? Again, it is the student's choice to attend or not. If you want to force them to attend you can certainly have a rigorous attendance policy for that rather than withholding information from them.
Just my two cents.
i'm not gonna start a fight with you, Sven. you shouldn't have said it in the first place, period. you've got no reason to assume i'm "annoying" other than that i apparently know something about IT - if that annoys you, you're not gonna like what's coming in life.
I'm a lover, not a fighter. I also never accused you personally of being annoying (how the fuck would I know?). If I may quote myself: "ITites like you can be just as annoying as the Luddites." Read carefully: "like you can be," not "you are."
The term "ITite" I just made up because I thought it contrasted nicely with "Luddite." It was not meant to be disparaging in any way.
I personally know some very annoying IT people, OK? People with an arrogant and condescending lack of patience for the uninitiated, and who are dicks about it. I admit I caught a whiff of such an attitude in your original comment ("oy"), and that's what I responded to.
See? I didn't "assume" anything about you--you said you were a "CSD freak" (whatever that is) and then you commented kind of scornfully about people who don't even know how to "put up a blog."
I do find condescension annoying, though, and I think your last statement applies.
"I think if more students were motivated, there wouldn't lectures at all. It's the slowest and most inefficient way to transmit information short of semaphore."
This is purest bullshit. Good lecture courses can be thrilling intellectual adventures. If you prefer to stay in your dorm room running the online tutorials and reading the e-text, though, rock on.
I would have done much better if I hadn't had to take notes in class (late '60s). Trying to write down what had been said while trying to listen to what was being said and remember that to write down later (repeat do loop) was not something I did well. Throw in really bad penmanship (I couldn't read it later if I wrote fast) and you get extreme frustration.
Memories of the ditto: I actually cranked out some of those while a TA.
Sven wrote:
Not my observation. Taking notes as you suggest requires thinking time to digest, absorb, and extract the important information from the lecture. You can't do that with the guy droning on and on.
As for class attendance dropping like a rock, yes, I believe that. Maybe it deserves to. :-)
"It may be more convenient to have notes to annotate, and it may well free you up to "just listen," but I am certain that you learn the stuff better when you're taking notes (NOT copying words from a screen)--you have to remain engaged in the lecture."
I agree with you on this; that's why I spent time annotating my printouts. But, really, someone flashes some complicated molecular pathway (taken from a review article, of course, with an unreadable caption) on the screen for 20s- how I am supposed to copy all that down? Someone puts up some figure from a paper with the expression levels of three different proteins in different parts of the embryo- I can't draw quickly enough to do that justice! Usually, it isn't the whole figure that's important, just some small section of it, but it's hard to even write down the important parts if you don't have that nice visual aid in front of you. Plus, if there's no textbook for the classes, and the lecture slides aren't on the web, once the lecture is over, *poof* those diagrams and figures are gone. 75% of my college courses were taught in a Powerpoint-driven, copy-and-paste figures from papers way, and I sure needed those slides as reference and to take notes effectively.
"If you want to force them to attend you can certainly have a rigorous attendance policy for that rather than withholding information from them."
I agree 100% that a student's learning is the responsibility of the student. But I neither want to force attendance nor withhold information. I don't have a rigorous attendance policy--none at all, in fact. I agree it's the student's choice to attend or not. On the other hand, I have no desire to aid and abet those who choose not to show up...if I thought students could learn the material as well by just reading the notes, why should I show up? I bust my ass to prepare good lectures full of visual aids, interesting information too new for the textbook, participatory exercises, discussions of case studies etc. because I truly believe it's the best way to teach the content (mostly physiology). Students who want to excel come to class, pay attention, and take notes. Slack-offs (among which, by the way, I would count myself as an undergrad) don't get the crutch.
Or maybe i'm just too lazy to type up the damn notes.
Fascinating. We used to be the only tool-making animals, now we can not even use them properly...
1) I agree tools sometimes get in the way. The problem is our brain, not the tool.
2) Tools can be great complements to things we already do
3) Even more interestingly, tools are already enhancing our ability to do things in ways we couldn't before with comparable results &efficiency, such as computer-based cognitive training to improve processing or working memory. Try doing that by talking!
One of my professors refused to put her Powerpoint lectures online. She had them available at the library, so you could check them out, but fewer than five students a semester ever did. She objected to them because when she had them freely available, most of the class printed them out full-size, brought them to class, and then didn't write anything on them. Her lectures were blazing-fast, and the slides didn't cover more than key words. She didn't want to support bad study habits just because they used the same tools as not-bad study habits. A good Powerpoint usually will not stand without the presentation.
I write very, very quickly when I have to and process information much better that way. Yeah, it's partially verbatim, but I can read over my notes and know what I have to know. Printing the notes never entered my head-- I only printed them for equation- or chemistry-heavy courses, four slides to a side, and then I copied my notes and the textbook into every inch of white space. I learn by text.
Like any tool, there's right ways to use it and wrong ways to use it. I like to think that I have a right way.
A professor I have now never understood why I used my own notebook in his class instead reading from the notes he handed out. Again, Powerpoint slides, one to a page, often one-sided printing, with black backgrounds.
Congratulations, you have missed the point.
One more then I'm going home.
First, synapse, I agree that making powerpoint slides of visual aids available is a good idea, and I have done this when I was organized enough to have my shit together ahead of time (i.e. 3rd time teaching the course). My problem is with posting textual notes--the actual information to be learned. Why not just make em buy the book and give em the exam?
Second, you guys keep describing BAD TEACHERS--droning on & on, zooming too fast, leaving complicated and illegible diagrams up for only a few seconds...that's BAD TEACHING. Haven't you ever seen a really good, engaging lecture?
Sven: [i]This is purest bullshit. Good lecture courses can be thrilling intellectual adventures.[/i]
I totally agree. Now, what about the ones that aren't good lecture courses? Because in my experience, probably markedly different than yours, most class time is not worth the drive.
Powerpoint is great if you know how to use it effectively. Giving out notes can be an effective tool, especially in introductory freshman courses, to teach students how to take their own notes. I use both, but as the semester wears on the handouts have more blank space and less information. I also handed out a list of abbreviations (and their meanings) I used in the notes. Learning to abbreviate many, many things helps students take more effective notes too. Anyway, during the course of the semester students learn how to separate important points from the examples given. At least that has been my experience.
BTW the handouts required little extra work; they were the notes I lectured from.
The bottom line is that good teaching will always be good teaching, no matter the medium. Bad teaching is just that, bad teaching. No amount of Powerpoint, lecture handouts, online material etc. will improve the teaching itself.
Yes, in Junior, Senior and graduate courses that were to small to really be called lectures.
Never in Freshman or Sophomore courses, with several hundred students. You needed opera glasses to even see the professor let alone the diagrams.
"Second, you guys keep describing BAD TEACHERS--droning on & on, zooming too fast, leaving complicated and illegible diagrams up for only a few seconds...that's BAD TEACHING. Haven't you ever seen a really good, engaging lecture?"
Yes. But as in most things, there are far more mediocre teachers than good ones. Teaching well is difficult, and in the schools I've attended, teaching is not supposed to be the professor's first priority. Posting slides on the web (which, honestly, is nearly the same as posting notes, because nearly everyone sticks "notes-type" information in the same ppt as visual information) is a very easy way for lecturers to get around their teaching inadequacies and help students learn.
I've also found that nearly everybody who gives a Powerpoint lecture goes too fast for students to take adequate notes. If you aren't writing the information out yourself, you don't realize how much time it takes to physically write it down. It's so frustrating to spend an hour trying to listen to the lecturer while simultaneously furiously writing stuff down from three slides ago; you just know that you're missing stuff. The best teachers in my university taught mostly in chalk, and with them I was more than happy to take notes. But if a professor is going to give Powerpoint lectures, he or she should at least give the students a fighting chance by posting the notes somewhere.
I was an undergrad student in political science from 98-02, and was at a school where technology didn't catch on so fast, so technology ability varied by professor. I can name at least a few changes off the top of my head that made learning much less onerous:
- required readings not from the books. Practically all professors assigned readings that were outside the books they told us to buy in the syllabus. Under the old system, the library would make 3-4 copies to be checked out for 2 hours at a time. This sucked when, especially in a large lecture, all copies were taken out and you had to wait, sometimes for hours, just to get the reading. Under the new system, the prof. or the library would post a PDF to the web. Poof, hours of time saved, and you could actually write on the page if you wanted to.
- handing in papers via email/Blackboard. No worries about finding a printer, or having enough money to print your 25 page paper (it was college after all), or rushing to someone's office if you were running late. More time to work on the paper, less time working logistics.
- online syllabi, especially if posted before the semester begins. Could only possibly be opposed by sadist professors who think spending hours in line at the bookstore and frantically looking for a class during add/drop are necessary for the real college experience.
Sven,
You state "I neither want to force attendance nor withhold information. I don't have a rigorous attendance policy--none at all, in fact. I agree it's the student's choice to attend or not."
Surely it is, if you allow them to choose. However, I tend to believe that my students will be better educated at the end of the semester if I enforce attendance rigorously. I'll admit that they can do their best to not learn even if they are forced to be there, but they will still learn more by being there for my class than by staying home and playing WOW.
That's the point for me, to educate them, even if it is resisted. They choose to take the class. They choose to go to a college that requires my class. I give them the best chance of learning, by making sure they are there. They can still not show up, but they will pay a huge price in their grade. Similarly, they can choose not to take a test, the effects will be similar. All their options are still there.
Hell, I tell my students I don't even check email on weekends. Now, if there's a paper due after the weekend (exams are rare in my classes), I may make an exception and do a once or twice check, (I'll let 'em know) but weekends are my time.
I wonder how many of these issues are disciplinary. I rarely lecture, so there are no lecture notes to post. I'll include what I call "lecturettes" during class conversation, but I tend to bring questions for discussion (based on the assigned reading) into the classroom and attempt to have the class collaboratively come to work them out. Or, with some of my upper level classes, well just dig into the texts (this summer has been fun for that). But, I'm a sociologist, which is hardly the same as organic chemistry (yeah, I took it as an undergrad--was only a semester short of a ChemEng BS when I changed majors because I hated it so much--org was OK, but PChem sucked horribly and thermo was unbearable).
Beyond the disciplinary question, the fact remains that there as teachers we aren't all skilled at doing the same things. My own background in doing workshops, as well as my own ADD issues, makes my conversational approach to the classroom work better than lecturing (I couldn't even keep myself interested in talking for 75 minutes). My pedagogical approach is driven by theory, and by my own personality.
I was asked for a couple years to lead a workshop on teaching for first year teaching fellows where I'm doing my PhD. (these are grad students who are teaching their own classes rather than acting as TAs) Working with faculty and my own approach to develop the workshop, the main lesson I came up with was: work to your own strengths. If you're a great lecturer, do that. If you're a better facilitator of conversation, do that. Just do what you need to do to communicate the material in a way that your students understand it. Technology is a tool for doing that, and nothing more.
A quick look around his college's website shows that faculty can use the Blackboard/WebCT service to post class info, notes, etc on the web, all with a web-based interface for doing so.
It also seems that several of the faculty have personalized web pages listing department hours, classes taught, etc.
Mr. Jenkins is not among them. Perish the thought that he actually make information easily available to his students, but then I suspect he uses AOL 2.0 and 28K dial-up, so maybe "easily available" is not something he's caught up to yet.
synapse: Fair enough.
Dahan: I think there's a lot to be said for your approach. The real reason I do not make attendance a grading criterion is simply because I blew off a lot of classes as an undergrad (especially those first three "undecided" years...), and I'd feel hypocritical to ding people for sometimes having other priorities. (I always accept late assignments without penalty for the same reason--believe it or not this policy is very seldom abused).
Everything on the exams comes right out of lectures and the textbook is a recommended supplement, so people who miss a lot of classes tend (with occasional exceptions) to perform poorly.
MAJeff: Are those biscuits I smell? You make some excellent points. Good teaching can come in many flavors, even within disciplines. And disciplines also lend themselves to different approaches. If I had to teach blood-pressure regulation by conversation about theory we'd be there all year and I'd never get to my famous lecture on the physiology of farting.
Odd. The professors I've met who actually enforce attendance invariably teach directly from the book and/or have an inflated sense of their own importance, and I didn't learn significantly better in any of their classes. Sven's policy is what's always worked for me as a student.
PS: I bet this guy automatically fails students who cite Wikipedia, too...
"A good Powerpoint usually will not stand without the presentation."
True, but for someone who has seen the presentation as well, a good Powerpoint makes an excellent aide-memoire.
One big issue that needs to be addressed is how PowerPoint is used in the classroom. My student evaluations in recent semesters point toward a backlash by students toward the use of PowerPoint in the classroom. Students are complaining about how PowerPoint is being overused and/or misused. Tools like PowerPoint have their place in the classroom but one must consider that not all content lends itself well to the PowerPoint venue. For example, when discussing Mendelian genetics, I find that I always go back to the board because of the need to develop the concepts of alleles; etc works much better on the board.
All instructional tools need to be evaluated according to how their use will enhance the student's ability to learn....not how their use will make it easier for the professor!
HMiller
Azkyroth,
I have noticed that trend also, where "The professors I've met who actually enforce attendance invariably teach directly from the book and/or have an inflated sense of their own importance". But it certainly doesn't have to be that way. I like to use group learning exercises and hold discussion orientated classes. I actually lecture (in the more traditional sense of the word) as little as possible. There are times when using that format is the best choice however. Which ties nicely into what others have said on this post. Namely, that one should use all the tools available to reach as many students as one can. Technologies like the Internet, being one of them.
They certainly are. I just can't call myself a god at PZ's site. Something wouldn't sit right about doing that.
And now, off to prepare for a class on lesbian pulp novels, homophile organizational newsletters, the Supreme Court, and the development of queer publics and communities.
Reminds me of an old joke:
Q: How do you tell the difference between a lecture by a biologist, a physicist, and a mathematician?
A: The biologist brings a powerpoint presentation, web links and supplementary readings, the physicist brings some handwritten overhead transparencies, and the mathematician comes with blank transparencies and a pen.
The technology needs to fit the subject. See Edward Tufte's comments on Powerpoint presentations ( http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint). I taught math just fine with sliding blackboards and/or transparencies...
"...I'd never get to my famous lecture on the physiology of farting. - Sven DiMilo
Fianlly, now we're talking about something in my area of expertise, er, practice.
Do you have those notes online?
No one's asked the really important question.
Why the heck are you reading the Chronicle of Higher Education?
All instructional tools need to be evaluated according to how their use will enhance the student's ability to learn....not how their use will make it easier for the professor!
Definitely. I completely agree. But these things are often related - for instance, for me, PPT allows me easily to incorporate images into my lectures/make them a focus for discussion. I believe that for my students in the classes I teach, images enhance their ability to learn - but before PPT came along, I used very few of them, because I didn't have time/money to invest in slides, couldn't always get hold of a slide projector if I wanted one, couldn't always get it to work once I did find one. Sometimes making things easier for the professor actually DOES help enhance student learning.
The professors I've met who actually enforce attendance invariably teach directly from the book and/or have an inflated sense of their own importance, and I didn't learn significantly better in any of their classes. Sven's policy is what's always worked for me as a student.
Ummm... I do enforce attendance policies, and I really like to think neither of these descriptions apply to me (you guys will just have to take my word for it). Yeah, some students can teach themselves really well and don't have to come to class to succeed, and more power to them. I've come across far MORE students, however, who skip class and don't have the ability to teach themselves, and given that, I do require attendance because they're not always able to evaluate what will best facilitate their own learning. (I hope this in itself doesn't come across as self-important - like if they don't listen to the pearls of wisdom from my lips they won't learn anything; it's just that I've taught at a lot of places where the students were 1) 18-21, and hence not always completely grown up yet, and 2) often from educational backgrounds where they really didn't know how to do school well. I find that an attendance policy can help such students.)
Oh, and to go back a bit: I agree that those things are convenient, but the question remains: do they increase learning? do more students actually complete homework assignments now that they're posted on the web? are more students prepared for class when syllabi are on the web?
Are any fewer doing the homework or preparing for class? I doubt (based on my own experiences) that the degree to which students are doing these things is determined by whether the assignments are presented on paper or online. I have to confess that I find it easier to access my syllabus online (to check what we're doing on a given day) than to figure out where I last stashed the paper copy.
Now, administrators lauding technology as an improvement in education without actually caring about how that technology is used, or assessing how it's used, are certainly a problem, but the problem isn't that technology is bad, it's that administrators are abusing it for their own purposes.
Even if the technology doesn't make our teaching any better than it would be without, if it makes it easier for me to achieve that same level, I'm grateful for it.
Nathan Parker: Actually, I've read and heard from some public speaking experts that notes should be handed out at the end, so that people don't get distracted by them.
Cain: I must have known some of those sadists, or at least people who agree with them. At one place I was at some of the professors wouldn't even put up a written copy of the evaluation scheme on some of their courses prior to the semester start because he/she was sick of students "shopping around" based on perceived workload.
other bill: On the other hand, what would be great (but utopian) for math classes would be one of those whiteboard recording devices so that notes can be made available.
As for attendance, well, sometimes it is dictated by the institution. I for one don't like attendance requirements, but a class participation grade in small classes is worth doing, I think.
Azkyroth, if you knew about proper research, you'd know that citing an encyclopedia (of which Wikipedia is a new example) is roughly the equivalent of citing Reader's Digest. It's a very good read, but why don't you actually go read the REAL item before it was pre-digested by an editor? All encyclopedias are essentially tertiary sources with questionable authority, and this includes even the venerable Encyclopaedia Britannica. Even Wikipedia notes this on their site in the section regarding how they recommend the site be used for research.
Also, I read all the comments above , and I don't think anyone has noted the one compelling problem to all of this [which I noted on another web-site]:
What about the students who either don't have access to a computer or who simply don't know how to use it???
Some of my students have a phenomenal inability to use word processing programs [a few even try to hand in handwritten assignments]. Many never read the syllabus [in either hard copy or online]. Many read the assignment posted on Blackboard and then scurry off to do...something that only vaguely ends up looking like the assignment.
Technology is not in and of itself an anodyne. It's often just a band-aid. Students who are unmotivated will be just as unmotivated no matter which medium the course uses. I believe THAT was Jenkins' real point in his article. The pro-technology backslappers completely missed this point because they were offended that their sacred cow was defiled in print. Such blasphemy.