From InsideHigherEd, an article by Laura Blankenship, “Technology as a Liberal Art,” focuses on the uses of blogging and other forms of technology in a liberal arts setting.
There’s more reportage here on how professors are using technology as a tool for commenting on papers, or for offering lectures via podcasts and screencasts to be consumed before class meets:
At Bryn Mawr, Michelle Francl, a professor of chemistry, is recording all of her lectures for her physical chemistry course. She’s capturing her computer screen and her voice, saving the video and the audio file, and posting them to her blog. For now, these recorded lectures, or screencasts and podcasts, serve primarily as review for the students. In the future, however, she plans to assign these recorded lectures much as she would assign a text and use class time for something more engaging than a lecture.
As she said recently at a conference, “I used to always show the students the easy case during the lecture and send them home to work on the hard case, but that’s just the opposite of what I think I should do. Now we can work on the hard case in class.”
I liked this for a number of reasons. First of all, in some courses, lecturing, in some form and at least some of the time, is actually necessary. (This flies in the face of the pedagogical styles most writing and literature folks, like myself, have been moving towards, but for some types of content, lecturing serves an important function.) Secondly, Francl is using the technology to spring-board her in-class work to new levels. Rather than offering podcasted lectures as a way for absent students to catch-up, Francl’s method challenges students with information needed for the next task they’ll do together.
I can also see some barriers here. Faculty need support in identifying creative and useful ways–like those Francl has found–to use technology to enhance existing courses. This means time, money, and human support (skilled people who can help with the process). I hope that colleges see the value in this work, and invest in it.
As much as technology can facilitate learning both in the classroom and beyond, and as much as i believe that learning should happen both in the classroom and beyond, one thing about Michelle Francl’s suggestion concerns me: how can she ensure that students will learn what she needs them to at home to then work on the more difficult cases in the classroom? Will students learn well enough from a podcast that they could then jump into more difficult work? Or from the lecturer’s perspective, do students’ reactions affect the lecture? It concerns me that there is a total disconnect between lecturer and audience, but if there isn’t, then how could a series of archived lectures supplement the class effectively? Then again, a text book can’t, so perhaps it shouldn’t matter that the recorded lecturer can’t stop to take the students’ questions, or to reiterate a point that wasn’t understood by the majority of the students. I would be concerned that class time would be spent re-teaching the recorded material as well as teaching the new lecture material, and that both would suffer. How can a balance be achieved? What can the lecturer do to ensure that the class is learing from the archived lectures?
Reply to Jody
Kate, you mention the role of and usefulness lectures can have in courses and Jody’s ambivalence toward Francl’s idea that students might read her blog for ‘lecture’ material and simpler cases and then spend classtime on more complex issues prompted me to think a bit about lecturing. I think there are times it is necessary as well, but I’m prompted to think more carefully about how, and to recognize that although it might be one-sided, it is still a kind of conversation. As a graduate student I have now taught Introduction to Sociology close to fifteen times and each time it is different. Some of the content is different, and I have used varying ratios of lecture:discussion:writing:visual media in each course. Each group of students is also different and I have taught the course at three different schools now. Audience IS important. I can not seem to make a class take shape entirely around my method of presenting material and the content I use. I think the same would be true using blogs to present information–something will change each time that lecture material is used whether it be blogged, Blackboarded, or spoken with a live audience.
Reply to Deborah
In response to Jody, I think the nice thing about Francl’s new approach is that during the classes, she can help students understand the listened-to-at-home “lecture’s” content, as well as going into the more diffucult cases. And after all, her old method was to have students working on a difficult case at home, alone (so they would have needed to do some debriefing on that in class too, right?) I get Jody’s concerns, but I don’t see them as disappearing if Francl goes back to her old methods.
I like a system that requires students to –gasp!– do their homework, and even makes it seem really important to do that. I agree that they may not do so, or they may not understand it–and Jody is right that some kind of review would have to be built into the class time before the new, more challenging case is dealt with.
I think Deborah’s idea is right–there has to be flexibility and courses have to suit their audiences. I think my distaste comes from courses (even grad level seminars!) where professors lecture on and on in a very non-interactive way. I think it puts people to sleep. And I think too many people do this rather than think of more imaginative ways of interacting with students.
I should also say that the course I taught in which I lectured the most was one in which the material was most foreign to students. I was teaching Northern Irish poetry, and the poems are filled with references to specific times, places, events in the poets’ world. I felt it did not do to try and read the poems without being able to understand some of that background. And a good chunk of that background came from lecturing, though I tried to convey this knowledge in a number of ways.
The key here seems to be in expanding our methods of pedagogy, including more techniques, and trying to use them in different ways.
Reply to Kate
It’s interesting to think about how students and teachers might react to having to digest video material before class. Of course, I’m already asking my students to come to class having done some work outside, namely, reading! Students are quite saavy with video, pausing, rewinding, etc, to get the most out of it. And, of course, we have mechanisms to see where to jump into the conversation with our students. I use all sorts, working an example on the board led by the students, pre-assessments (web based), asking students to re-cap the salient points etc.
So, I’m not worried that I’ll be repeating any more of the outside class assigments than I already do (since I do assign reading and prep problems), and hope to do less.
Reply to Michelle