There is an interesting conversation going on in the comments on this post, focusing largely on various aspects of our current model of college teaching. Sadly, I’ve been too swamped to jump in (largely because of the demands of college teaching — go figure!), but I’m going to offer a quick and necessarily incomplete set of observations that may be of interest in pushing the conversation someplace productive.
On the pedagogical advisability of large lecture courses:
- I don’t like them either.
- Some students really like them (prefer them, actually, to smaller classes) and seem to have developed effective strategies for learning from them.
- I know of no large lecture classes in my department that consist of an instructor speaking for three hours at a time. Indeed, even in 75 minute class periods, the instructors who teach large lectures (even with 100+ students) are using all sorts of strategies (from asking questions to having students take turns presenting background material to running small group activities that return to a whole-class discussion) to get the students to engage with the material (and with each other).
- Of course, I’m not ruling out the possibility that there are instructors in other departments or other universities who do drone on to their students for the whole class period (and that it might amount to three hours of droning).
- Not all large classes are offered in colleges or universities where there is funding for teaching assistants (or even for graders).
- Not all large classes are offered in colleges or universities where teaching is a valued (or seriously evaluated) part of a faculty member’s professional duties.
- At some universities where teaching is a valued (and seriously evaluated) part of a faculty member’s professional duties, budgetary pressures push in the direction of larger classes rather than smaller ones (since you’re paying fewer faculty to process the same number of students, and, apparently, since the people controlling the budget think that producing educated human beings is just like making widgets in a factory).
On online courses as a solution to the problems of large lectures (among other things):
- Some students really do have an easier time engaging with course material (and each other) in online courses. I’ve described some of this in a post of yore describing my experiences teaching online.
- Some students have a harder time engaging with course material (and each other) in online courses.
- The differences I’ve noticed in which students take to the environment of online courses and which do not seem not to be generational. Rather, they seem to have more to do with learning style.
- An online course, taught in a way that takes student engagement seriously, tends to involve more instructional work (not less) than does a class of the same size in a classroom.
- I haven’t yet seen a sensible way to automate an online class that delivers serious college-level material and gives meaningful feedback to students on their work and on their questions with the material.
On the pedagogical issues more generally:
- University faculty are usually taught approximately nothing about things like “learning styles” in the course of their training to be university faculty.
- I reckon it’s possible that college students are usually taught approximately nothing about things like “learning styles” as they approach the project of being successful in their college classes.
- It requires serious effort to teach course material effectively, especially to a group of students with different learning styles, abilities, and levels of interest in the course you are teaching them.
- It requires serious effort to learn course material effectively, especially when you are sharing an instructor with a group of students who may have different learning styles, abilities, and levels of interest in the course than yours.
There’s more I could say, but I have to go teach a class. Discuss.
Thank you.
I’d like to see Mike Howe’s response to this.
Again, I could condense my lectures to notes and give them to my class to read before class, this would be akin to asking them to read the chapter before class, which they don’t do. I feel the distractions students constantly face makes it very difficult for them to obtain information from reading material, reading time that could hypothetically allow for other modes of teaching beyond the lecture. Forcing students to be in the same room as one another and listen together to the presentation of information is one of the only ways to get them to focus on one topic for a meaningful duration of time.
On the pedagogical issues more generally:
`Yes’ to everything you said, Janet, plus `It’s a bad thing that these are not widely recognized.’
And now to work on the latest tedious revision of a syllabus for a class I’m team-teaching next term!
I’ve been wrestling with this myself a bit this semester. I got talked into teaching three very different classes – one fully online, one hybrid (half online, half in person), and one upper division regular two-day-a-week class that is a new prep. I hadn’t done a fully online section before this semester either. In both the hybrid and the online course, I had about 20-30% drop before the drop date through not showing up/not participating, 10-15% that should have dropped, and a wide variety of interest/involvement from the remaining 45-70%. You’re right – some students do great in an online setting, more do mediocre work, many do poorly. IMHO, two things are relevant to student success there: computer skills and motivation. If you have those two things, you’ll do at least okay, up to great.
Take a look at this on temperment testing. http://www.keirsey.com/
I test out as a scientist (amazing!) which is about 10% of the population. Like most professors I have had little formal education on how to teach. So, when I taught a General Education biology course for non-science majors, I probably taught as I would like to be taught, but not as most of them would like to be taught.
There are objections to temperment testing. I’ve had an educational psychologist tell me it was complete bull, and some people regard it as an invasion of privacy.
On lack of education about “learning styles”: this is probably a good thing.
There are fairly convincing arguments that the whole “learning style” concept (eg: VAK theory) is essentially garbage (and, at best, inadequately supported by evidence).
See http://psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/PSPI_9_3.pdf
I don’t find this to be a “fairly convincing” argument that the whole “learning style” concept is essentially garbage. I agree, it points out weaknesses in the “learning style” concept, but… first impression: I’m not overly fond of the assumptions in this paper cited. I’d have to read it more carefully to provide a real critique.
FTA:
“To provide evidence for the learning-styles hypothesis—whether it incorporates the meshing hypothesis or not—a study must satisfy several criteria.”
Maybe okay so far…
“First, on the basis of some measure or measures of learning style, learners must be divided into two or more groups (e.g., putative visual learners and auditory learners).”
Not sure this is actually true. It assumes, rather baldly, that “visual learners” and “auditory learners” are disjoin sets, and that they should be the separation criteria. These two assumptions may not be the case (probably is not the case, I’d guess). Someone may benefit from a visual learning *teaching method* in a particular topic, while also benefiting from a auditory approach for a different topic altogether.
I can easily imagine, for example, that the methodology may more closely track with the subject rather than the pupil. Or that the methodology most appropriate for a given student and a given teacher and a given subject is dependent upon all three of those variables.
“Second, subjects within each learning-style group must be randomly assigned to one of at least two different learning methods (e.g., visual versus auditory presentation of some material).”
Wait, what? Hm. So we need to have the ability to place students into two groups, and then we must subdivide those two groups randomly, and we must teach the resulting four groups with the two different methods.
Not sure you can get this past an IRB.
“So I’m teaching using only an auditory method to these students. What happens if they’re not ‘getting it’?”
“You move on”.
Good luck with that one
“Third, all subjects must be given the same test of achievement (if the tests are different, no support can be provided for the learning-styles hypothesis).”
Given that proper construction of testing instruments is itself a pretty contentious issue in educational literature, I’m not convinced that you’re going to be able to construct a testing instrument that isn’t biased towards one of the two learning styles and blow your results out of the water. That said, if you can do that, you’d have a damn good research study.
“Fourth, the results need to show that the learning method that optimizes test performance of one learning-style group is different than the learning method that optimizes the test performance of a second learning-style group”
This assumes that the outcomes are going to be ratio interval measurements.
I don’t think that the experimental methodology that the author describes is practical, and probably isn’t going to give you great data. I’m not convinced that experimental methodologies are necessarily the right way to track this question; controlling for the “teacher” variable alone is probably impossible, never mind controlling for teaching methods and the style of learning.
Craig, I think you are right. Isn’t this exactly the problem with public education? I like my kids taking classes from a history teacher who has actually studied history rather than a math teacher that has an open slot, regardless of her fluency in learning styles.
For some really cutting edge teaching check out Cathy Davidson’s HASTAC blog/program. http://www.hastac.org
I love online courses in which the student is allowed some autonomy. An online class for which civility is the top priority ruins the discussion (but I admit that a certain level of civility is necessary — the main rule being don’t cause anybody shame). I drop ones taught by graduate students (especially when they identify themselves as “professor”), and ones that do not include a variety of primary sources and lots and lots of writing. I especially avoid classes (online or otherwise) that prescribe the topic of my paper AND how I’m going to argue (!) Being over the hill, I prefer online classes now — but for face to face learning, you can’t beat a small seminar (8-12 students) with a brilliant professor — especially one with very high standards.
I can imagine some survey courses in which an instructor is not needed. If having an instructor doesn’t add anything to the class, then why have one? (Sorry graduate students who teach recipe surveys.)
> I like my kids taking classes from a history teacher who has
> actually studied history rather than a math teacher that has
> an open slot, regardless of her fluency in learning styles.
Generally, sure.
But I can name a few math teachers in my experience who are damn fine educators and pretty good armchair musicians who can teach an instrument quite a bit better than the teacher with a degree in music and music theory who can’t teach worth a damn. Just sayin’