Hello:
I read this short essay on in favor of lecturing (and the short essay critical of lecturing that I have linked from the text) and thought I would see what others thought, especially by adding some devil's advocate comments within the text. As an disclaimer, the Faculty Center does not preach against lecturing and we will consult with any faculty member who wishes to meet to talk about further development of her or his lecturing. We do not tell people how they should teach. That said, let's see what the devil's (or angel's?) advocate has to say. It will also help to read the short, linked essay to get the pointer - counterpoint going.
IN DEFENSE OF THE COLLEGE LECTURE
By Fred D. White
Why has the college lecture been getting such a bad rap recently? William Honan, in a recent New York Times piece, ``The College Lecture, Long Derided, May Be Fading,'' ( http://www.uh.edu/admin/media/topstories/nytimes/200208/nytimescollegelecture081402.html) argues that students and faculty alike are cheerily sending the lecture down its road to extinction. No less august an authority than U. of Pennsylvania President Judith Rodin insists that the ``computerization of intellectual life'' has made the lecture obsolete.
I could not disagree more. Stage Left: "Lectures were once useful; but now when all can read, and books are so numerous, lectures are unnecessary." (Samuel Johnson, 1799)
As a university professor, I am aware that a sizable number of students will lapse into instant narcosis the moment their professors take the podium. There are usually two reasons for this: poor lecturing or poor listening.
Poor lecturing results from unskilled delivery or from material that fails to engage -- such as rehashing of what's already in the textbooks. Colleges, alas, have their share of poor lecturers, which is a shame because a training program could help otherwise gifted new faculty hone up on this venerable and powerful pedagogical tool.
But poor listening habits are most responsible for bringing down the lecture as a learning tool. The situation is paradoxical, because lecturing is one of the finest ways I know of for developing listening skills in the first place.
First-year college students need to regard listening as a skill (or an art) that must be exercised daily, and with deliberation. One of the keenest experiences derived from the lecture is that of a rich audio-visual interplay: The lecturer presents an insight; engaged students will not only understand it but also assimilate it, make it their own.
Dr. Rodin pits lecturing against mentoring, but why not see these modes of teaching as complementary, mutually reinforcing? And if you're going to pit the lecture against the Internet, you'd best begin with the classroom itself. Four walls, linear seating and its resulting protocols (raising your hand to speak, not speaking unless spoken to) -- how Old World compared to the multi-sensorial Net! But a gifted lecturer stimulates multi-sensorial response.
It is beyond dispute that educators should search for new ways to engage young minds, just as it is beyond dispute that the Internet is a revolutionary learning tool. But let me mention just a few things about the old-fashioned lecture that I consider equally indispensable.
As an undergraduate at the U of Minnesota in the '60s, most of my courses were lecture-based -- and I almost always loved them, even when the lectures were tedious, even when the professor droned. More often than not, they set off intellectual fireworks in my head. (boldface is mine). I would write notes excitedly -- not taking dictation (the most useless kind of note taking), but trying to capture insights that were spewing forth from my nascent critical consciousness. This is what it means to listen well in college. Is Fred still in the 1960s? Do leftover hippies from the 60s comprise his students? Is he projecting his own passion as a student onto his students, thinking it is theirs? Were his fireworks from the lecturing, or from his inner fire that would have blazed whatever pedagogy was used? Do most of your students have the fireworks when you lecture really well? Why or why not?
What is more, I knew that I was in the presence of a scholar -- not just (boldface mine) a teacher, but someone who actually contributed to the body of knowledge being studied. That is a powerful ethos for an educator to project onto a young adult, especially when the professor, in the course of her lecture, explains to students what her research specifically hopes to accomplish, what the dissenters have had to say, and so on. Whoa Fred, my boy. Not "just a teacher"? Can a good teacher really teach well and help students learn well without being a scholar... both of her or his discipline, but also a scholar of teaching and learning itself? I feel uneasy about what Fred's idea of being a teacher is.
Ironically, the least useful classes for me at the time were the discussion sections, conducted by teaching assistants who were knowledgeable for the most part, but lacked the gravitas of professors.
The lecturing professor also conveys a personality and is not just an oral conduit for information that could have been obtained from a website or book. Even in formal, no-feedback-from-class lectures inside cavernous auditoriums, a skilled lecturer often is quirky, charismatic, surprisingly inventive; in short, memorable.
To give just one example: My anthropology professor, E. Adamson Hoebel, lecturing in a 500-seat auditorium, used to sing tribal songs to us in their respective native languages; would enact a ritual dance; would augment his lecture with slides and recordings. Three lectures a week, and every one of them ended with applause from us brain-bedazzled sophomores. Yes...Fred, my man, such a virtuoso performance on the lecturing stage can be impressive, entertaining, greatly stimulating and inspiring, receiving rave reviews (or student evaluations) ...and then it is the next day. Did the students learn to sing themselves, or experience the ritual dance from the perspective of the dancer? Did they have the opportunity to join peers in the dance? What would it mean to you if your students applauded you regularly at the end of classes? Did the professor receive merit pay or a raise for scoring in the red zone in the Pedagogical Applause O-Meter?
All of the newer strategies (mentoring, conferencing, small-group interaction) are valuable, but that is no excuse for abandoning the lecture, which humanizes learning (boldface mine) in a way that computerized learning cannot. Is this so? Should we ask students if their learning has been humanized by lecturing. Can instructional technologies be used in such ways as to humanize learning?
Listening to lectures is not passive -- it is active, and it is interactive, to use the arch-buzzword of computerdom. We interface with the lecturer's brain to assimilate understanding in our own brains. Note-taking is an excellent strategy for linking one with the other. Does note-taking usually and actually do what Fred claims?
The name of the game is intellectual excitement: That isn't just a teacher up there lecturing, but a shaper of knowledge itself. Students are not just the passive, plebian receptors of this knowledge but a new breed of assimilators -- and soon it is going to be their turn.
What I would like to hear about is what makes for groovy (Fred mentioned the 60s) lecturing and what makes for anti-groovy lecturing? Can and does a professor know when her or his lecturing is humanizing learning, as opposed to hindering it? (The angel's / devil's advocate exists, stage right)
Wow. That little demonic angel is a pain.
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Fred D. White is an associate professor of English at Santa Clara University. In 1997, he received the Louis and Dorina Brutocao Award for Teaching Excellence, and his textbook, ``The Well-Crafted Argument,'' was published earlier this year.
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© 2001 mercurynews and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.bayarea.com
Alan Altany, Professor & Director
Coulter Faculty Center for Teaching & Learning
Western Carolina University
Cullowhee, NC 28723 (U.S.)
Email: altany@email.wcu.edu
FAX: 828.227.7340
Web Site: http://facctr.wcu.edu <http://facctr.wcu.edu/>
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