Anyone else surprised by the amount of lecturing in humanities classes at T10 universities?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just watch political philosopher Michael Sandel's lectures for his Justice class at Harvard. He's brilliant and it's wonderful they're widely available.

The reason why his lectures are so excellent is because he doesn't really lecture. He engages in a Socratic dialogue with a large audience.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I think methods of teaching and learning in K-12 have changed significantly over the last 50 years to being all about student engagement, short attention spans, immediate gratification, pats on the back, active learning, everyone's a winner etc.

However many in post secondary feel that the current style of post secondary better prepares students for life after school and they aren't keen to move to the student led K-12 system. Many feel that lectures have worked well at preparing students for decades and that they don't want to change what isn't broken.

Does anyone actually believe that "lectures have worked well at preparing students for decades"?

That's precisely why everyone wanted and still wants to go the Oxbridge. The cost of admission gave the student access to the best lecturers in the world.

Ah yes, Oxbridge—you know, the schools with the famed 2-student tutorial system. I'm sure it's the lecture part that attracts people.

Well, obviously Oxbridge should switch to an entirely lecture-based system since, as we've learned in this thread, lectures are clearly pedagogically superior and preferred by most students.

Aren’t Oxbridge tutors basically like adjuncts or grad students? They’re not the big-name profs. Then I think you still go to big lectures? Seems like they actually have the best of both worlds there.

you mean like TA lead discussion groups and office hours? I wish US universities would jump on those ideas

I think at Oxbridge the tutors are more qualified and better supported than TAs in the US and they work 1:1 or in very small groups.

I spend a semester at Oxford and my tutors were grad students

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've never heard a smart person say they like lectures. There is a mismatch between the academic quality of the students at T10 schools and the methods used to educate them.

I've never heard a smart person say they dislike lectures.

FTFY.

I think the reason that DCUM parents are so pro-lecture is because DCUM parents aren't generally smart. They're just very rich and somewhat above average in term of intelligence. Their children are the finance bro type not the scholar type, and these types generally prefer lectures and don't like the idea of a professor-led discussion (or preparing for one).

However, these types also don't have self-awareness. A prep school parent once told me that they were convinced that Duke rejects DC-area prep schoolers because Duke has an irrational bias against area prep schools. It don't occur to them that these schools are actually filled with mediocrities.

Duke accepts from prep schools over public schools in our area, 2:1, and the prep schools have classes much more similar to Duke undergrad: discussions with the professor, mini lectures too, and lots of outside reading of primary sources

So uninformed 15 year olds debating turns into uninformed 19 year olds because none of them could be bothered to listen to a lecture?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Times have changed. Smartphones have decimated people’s attention span. Way too many distractions now. Lectures never worked especially well and are even less effective now.
Studies have shown that listeners only retain about 5-10% information from lectures. It is a very inefficient way to deliver information.

Well we know they don't read either. So what's your solution?

[Anonymous]

Same college professor here again. Believe me, I know about learning by lecturing vs. other methods. What it really comes down to is that learning is the student's own transformation, and they have to play an active role in order for it to happen. That active role can be doing preparatory reading and taking notes in the case of a lecture, working hands-on in a lab, role-playing in a clinical discipline, teaching something to someone else, or even just plain old writing a paper. It is my job to plan, to organize, to prompt, to assign, to explain, to demonstrate, to assist, to support, to challenge, and maybe even (if I am lucky) to create some curiosity. But there is nothing I can do in the classroom that can actually make someone learn if they don't lift a finger themselves, and that comes way before any debates about appropriate course format.

The real catch is that lecture is the one structure that _doesn't_ collapse when students are unprepared, and college students right now are unprepared most of the time. Yes, you can high-wire things by marching them forcibly through a painful "discussion" about things they have not read, but that rarely inspires compliance, and doing that stunt more than once is a waste of everyone's resources (including the people who are paying for those hours of class time). You can devise in-class exercises that engage students in "learning" even when they have not done their pre-work on the material, but ultimately the amount of learning that happens under those circumstances is minimal, no matter how engaged the students may seem to be.

Want to know how to get your student to succeed in college? Have them do their reading. Every day, for every class, in full, ideally while taking a few notes. (The quantity of reading they are assigned now is way less than you were asked to do when you were in college.) That is the starting-point for their transformation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Same college professor here again. Believe me, I know about learning by lecturing vs. other methods. What it really comes down to is that learning is the student's own transformation, and they have to play an active role in order for it to happen. That active role can be doing preparatory reading and taking notes in the case of a lecture, working hands-on in a lab, role-playing in a clinical discipline, teaching something to someone else, or even just plain old writing a paper. It is my job to plan, to organize, to prompt, to assign, to explain, to demonstrate, to assist, to support, to challenge, and maybe even (if I am lucky) to create some curiosity. But there is nothing I can do in the classroom that can actually make someone learn if they don't lift a finger themselves, and that comes way before any debates about appropriate course format.

The real catch is that lecture is the one structure that _doesn't_ collapse when students are unprepared, and college students right now are unprepared most of the time. Yes, you can high-wire things by marching them forcibly through a painful "discussion" about things they have not read, but that rarely inspires compliance, and doing that stunt more than once is a waste of everyone's resources (including the people who are paying for those hours of class time). You can devise in-class exercises that engage students in "learning" even when they have not done their pre-work on the material, but ultimately the amount of learning that happens under those circumstances is minimal, no matter how engaged the students may seem to be.

Want to know how to get your student to succeed in college? Have them do their reading. Every day, for every class, in full, ideally while taking a few notes. (The quantity of reading they are assigned now is way less than you were asked to do when you were in college.) That is the starting-point for their transformation.

OP here: this is a really helpful response. To do what do you attribute the decline in class preparation? I wonder if it is partly due to the extracurricular over-commitment that has become so prevalent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Times have changed. Smartphones have decimated people’s attention span. Way too many distractions now. Lectures never worked especially well and are even less effective now.
Studies have shown that listeners only retain about 5-10% information from lectures. It is a very inefficient way to deliver information.

Thats why you take notes. Almost all of med school was lectures. Med CME conferences are lectures. Part of undergrad was lectures, part seminar: still took notes . College wellness events have lectures for parents of freshman, and half the audience of parents were taking notes. Take notes if you want to retain more! My kids both took notes, unprompted, on college info sessions they were the most interested in.

Stop talking about med school which is a unique environment. There is a lot of memorisation involved in med school. And med students tend to be obsessive grade grubbers - they pretty much have to be just to get into med school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread is why my kids will not be attending US universities. I told them they can only attend a US school if they get a full scholarship. Otherwise it’s a European university because the quality is much better. Also as EU citizens, the cost is much better.

Speaking on behalf of almost all US universities and colleges (for which I am not authorized), we are fine with your decision. We respect the freedom to choose as well as the freedom to criticize and to engage in disagreement.

On what do you base your assessment that European universities are better than American universities ?

DP, but this is undoubtedly true. America has great good boy networks and a much stronger economy, so it doesn't matter to most, but other systems of education, including european ones, emphasize mastery at a very early level. Their first year students are where our students are...in their junior year. As a person in the sciences, it is not uncommon to be one of few Americans in a PhD program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've never heard a smart person say they like lectures. There is a mismatch between the academic quality of the students at T10 schools and the methods used to educate them.

I've never heard a smart person say they dislike lectures.

FTFY.

I think the reason that DCUM parents are so pro-lecture is because DCUM parents aren't generally smart. They're just very rich and somewhat above average in term of intelligence. Their children are the finance bro type not the scholar type, and these types generally prefer lectures and don't like the idea of a professor-led discussion (or preparing for one).

However, these types also don't have self-awareness. A prep school parent once told me that they were convinced that Duke rejects DC-area prep schoolers because Duke has an irrational bias against area prep schools. It don't occur to them that these schools are actually filled with mediocrities.

this is really smug and stupid

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Times have changed. Smartphones have decimated people’s attention span. Way too many distractions now. Lectures never worked especially well and are even less effective now.
Studies have shown that listeners only retain about 5-10% information from lectures. It is a very inefficient way to deliver information.

+1

If professors are going to lecture, they should just type up what they're going to say and assign it as a reading and cancel class.

So you think we’ve all lost the capacity to understand verbal information? The rise of Youtube and TikTok show the opposite.

A lecture is an important part of learning. The student needs to be engaged though- prepare ahead with the readings, listen actively, and take notes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Times have changed. Smartphones have decimated people’s attention span. Way too many distractions now. Lectures never worked especially well and are even less effective now.
Studies have shown that listeners only retain about 5-10% information from lectures. It is a very inefficient way to deliver information.

Thats why you take notes. Almost all of med school was lectures. Med CME conferences are lectures. Part of undergrad was lectures, part seminar: still took notes . College wellness events have lectures for parents of freshman, and half the audience of parents were taking notes. Take notes if you want to retain more! My kids both took notes, unprompted, on college info sessions they were the most interested in.

Stop talking about med school which is a unique environment. There is a lot of memorisation involved in med school. And med students tend to be obsessive grade grubbers - they pretty much have to be just to get into med school

so your argument is that education should be keyed to the laziest learners? ok.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Times have changed. Smartphones have decimated people’s attention span. Way too many distractions now. Lectures never worked especially well and are even less effective now.
Studies have shown that listeners only retain about 5-10% information from lectures. It is a very inefficient way to deliver information.

Thats why you take notes. Almost all of med school was lectures. Med CME conferences are lectures. Part of undergrad was lectures, part seminar: still took notes . College wellness events have lectures for parents of freshman, and half the audience of parents were taking notes. Take notes if you want to retain more! My kids both took notes, unprompted, on college info sessions they were the most interested in.

Stop talking about med school which is a unique environment. There is a lot of memorisation involved in med school. And med students tend to be obsessive grade grubbers - they pretty much have to be just to get into med school

so your argument is that education should be keyed to the laziest learners? ok.

People have this really stupid belief that memorization is bad when it is actually key to you learning anything.
If you can't remember vast amount of details, you are going to be a bad worker, no matter the major.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've never heard a smart person say they like lectures. There is a mismatch between the academic quality of the students at T10 schools and the methods used to educate them.

I've never heard a smart person say they dislike lectures.

FTFY.

I think the reason that DCUM parents are so pro-lecture is because DCUM parents aren't generally smart. They're just very rich and somewhat above average in term of intelligence. Their children are the finance bro type not the scholar type, and these types generally prefer lectures and don't like the idea of a professor-led discussion (or preparing for one).

However, these types also don't have self-awareness. A prep school parent once told me that they were convinced that Duke rejects DC-area prep schoolers because Duke has an irrational bias against area prep schools. It don't occur to them that these schools are actually filled with mediocrities.

Duke accepts from prep schools over public schools in our area, 2:1, and the prep schools have classes much more similar to Duke undergrad: discussions with the professor, mini lectures too, and lots of outside reading of primary sources

So uninformed 15 year olds debating turns into uninformed 19 year olds because none of them could be bothered to listen to a lecture?

DP. Duke has lectures and discussion groups. The PP post on socratic style lecture engaging larger classes is how I would describe most Duke classes, and that is how our kids "known" boarding school is. Students go to ivies and Duke with decent regularity. The high school students participate intelligently in discussions and also are very used to lectures, per my sons, though they noticed higher %participation once they got to their colleges(T10s). No "uninformed 19yr olds" are debating without the guidance of professors. The students who attend these colleges are cream of the crop, or at least the vast majority are. They do have intelligent thoughts and analytical skills, combined with a leader in the field steering the lecture/discussion, it is phenomenal. You are not giving enough credit to the current higher Ed learning, or maybe you have no experience with top colleges and top professors, or with top prep schools for that matter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Times have changed. Smartphones have decimated people’s attention span. Way too many distractions now. Lectures never worked especially well and are even less effective now.
Studies have shown that listeners only retain about 5-10% information from lectures. It is a very inefficient way to deliver information.

Thats why you take notes. Almost all of med school was lectures. Med CME conferences are lectures. Part of undergrad was lectures, part seminar: still took notes . College wellness events have lectures for parents of freshman, and half the audience of parents were taking notes. Take notes if you want to retain more! My kids both took notes, unprompted, on college info sessions they were the most interested in.

Stop talking about med school which is a unique environment. There is a lot of memorisation involved in med school. And med students tend to be obsessive grade grubbers - they pretty much have to be just to get into med school

so your argument is that education should be keyed to the laziest learners? ok.

People have this really stupid belief that memorization is bad when it is actually key to you learning anything.
If you can't remember vast amount of details, you are going to be a bad worker, no matter the major.

+1000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread is why my kids will not be attending US universities. I told them they can only attend a US school if they get a full scholarship. Otherwise it’s a European university because the quality is much better. Also as EU citizens, the cost is much better.

Speaking on behalf of almost all US universities and colleges (for which I am not authorized), we are fine with your decision. We respect the freedom to choose as well as the freedom to criticize and to engage in disagreement.

On what do you base your assessment that European universities are better than American universities ?

DP, but this is undoubtedly true. America has great good boy networks and a much stronger economy, so it doesn't matter to most, but other systems of education, including european ones, emphasize mastery at a very early level. Their first year students are where our students are...in their junior year. As a person in the sciences, it is not uncommon to be one of few Americans in a PhD program.

Highly dependent on the American college, however. Son was abroad at St Andrews, home school is ivy. The other ivy students, the Northwestern student, the UChicago kid, and the Notre Dame kid all did very well and thought St Andrews was frankly, easy, with each course requiring less work than they were used to. They were in classes with other third-year European and international students. The American students from a 30-ish LAC and several 40-50ish ranked publics struggled a lot: almost unable to keep up with the volume of reading and the prep needed for term exams., some of which were oral.