There’s a great discussion happening on the TeachandLearnOnline list at the moment, with the subject The future of the lecture.
As with all good discussions, it all started with some great questions from Sheree:
It seems that our lecture theatres are becoming more empty as the years go by. With the arrival of lecture streaming and placing lecture notes on the web, students don’t seem to see the need to turn up. Should we not bother with weekly lectures and just put up readings and notes for students on the web and concentrate our efforts on tutorials? Should we just run occasional lectures with guest speakers?
After a bit of a banter, there’s been some excellent questions about whether Uni Lecturers need also be good performers. James then reminded us that perhaps the lecture method is ok, but just overused… but is this really the case? A great lecture on an interesting topic by an engaging speaker can be an excellent learning experience, but this certainly isn’t the norm in my own experience.
No doubt things are changing rapidly in the way universities are “delivering their content”, but will they simply replace often-dry live lectures by downloadable dry mp3 versions? Is there a better way that’s affordable for Universities (and hence students)? I love the idea of students doing their investigation/reading etc on their own or in groups, then coming together in a lecture theatre to discuss and question and interact with their learning, with the facilitation of an expert. But it’s hard to imagine… Look forward to reading how the discussion develops!
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For the past 2 terms I have assigned my recorded archived lectures as podcasts/screencasts (and this term vodcast for video ipods) and do workshops instead of repeating the same lecture term after term. It is a much better use of my time as an educator. But you can only do this if your archived lectures truly replicate the classroom experience and it is my experience that a good screencast does that. Audio only, and for courses like organic chemistry, audio with static powerpoint or pdf files is not good enough. Students have to watch the mechansims being drawn as they are explained.
But I think it would be a mistake to try to artificially inject entertainment into recorded lecture screencasts. There is a lot of material to cover and there is no way around the fact that much of it will be dry. The reason live lectures are so painfully boring is that you are captive and have to sit through the whole thing. With the ability to pause and randomly access screencasts, accurate information is more important than entertainment.
In the workshops, I have the freedom to use entertaining interactions such as games because I know that all the material is covered in the recorded lectures.
Example: http://chem242.wikispaces.com, http://chem243.wikispaces.com
Wow, that sounds like a great setup Jean-Claude! A screencast is heaps better than audio only – one benefit i can think of is that it’s much easier to scan quickly (fast-forward) to the bits that are relevant to you too!
Great to see you using wikispaces and Creative Commons where you can!