In my Math-Learn/PhysLrnR post "Re: The college lecture may be
fading" (Hake 2002a), I should have indicated that the fading-lecture
thread on Math-Learn was initiated by Michael Paul Goldenberg's post
of Aug 19, 2002, 5:41am, titled "NYTimes.com Article: The College
Lecture, Long Derided, May Be Fading [Honan (2002)]." A similar
thread seems to be in play at Math-Teach.
According to Honan (2002), since 1931 Hamilton Holt . . (923 hits at
Google <http://www.google.com/>). . . has been influential at the
Univ. of Chicago, Antioch, Bennington, Cornell, Sarah Lawrence,
Lehigh, Vanderbilt, and elsewhere in advocating a "conference-system"
classroom in place of the customary academic lecture: "that
mysterious process by means of which the contents of the professor's
notebooks are transferred by means of the fountain pen to the pages
of the student's notebook without passing through the mind of
either."
As I earlier indicated (Hake 2000), Holt's description of the
passive-student lecture has been vividly captured in the classic
essay by organic chemist Bob Morrison (1986). Here are some excerpts:
MORRISON-MORRISON-MORRISON-MORRISON-MORRISON-MORRISON
"The bell rings ...(at the start of an organic chemistry class)...and
the professor shuffles his dog-eared notes - they're twenty, even
thirty years old, but they're just as good as the day he first wrote
them. The students come to attention, notebooks open and pencils
poised; they're ready to go. The professor clears his throat, and
the pencils move. He says 'Good Morning,' and the pencils begin to
move in earnest. Then he turns toward the blackboard and starts to
talk. As he talks, he writes. As he writes, the students write.
Whenever he writes, they write .... (at the end of the lecture)....
he picks up his precious lecture notes, and goes out. The students,
tired but happy, rise up and follow after him. Their heads are empty
but their notebooks are full. Their necks are a little tired; it's
like being at a vertical tennis match: board, notebook, board,
notebook. But other than that, everything is all right. Any student
will tell you, 'I never had any trouble with the course until the
first examination.' ....
"When Boyd and I brought out our first edition in 1959, we were faced
with the question of what to do with our class time .... It seemed
ridiculous to go into class and simply repeat what was already
available in the book..... Then at Atlantic City I happened to run
into Frank Lambert .... he was then teaching at Occidental College in
California. He was giving a talk on this very subject. He was
urging what he called 'the Gutenberg Method' of teaching - because,
of course, it was based on the fact that the printing press had been
invented several hundred years ago. Frank became my guru. I still
mentally bow towards the west when this subject comes up ..... I
found that other people had thought about this problem ....(such
as).... George Adkinson ....(who)... wrote an article called "Stop
Talking and Let the Students Learn to Learn." He refers to the use
of what he calls Bound Optimally Organized Knowledge, known by the
acronym of BOOK........
What does the Gutenberg Method involve? Simply this. You assign the
students portions of the textbook to study before they come to class.
When they come into the classroom, they are already acquainted with
the material .... You don't waste your time doing what Frank Lambert
calls 'presenting a boardful of elegantly organized material to
questions that the students have not asked.'
..... The students have read the material, they have thought about
it, and they have questions to ask about it. You answer these
questions, or, better still, try to get them to answer their own
questions, or get other students to give the answers. You ask
questions. You have a discussion. If they're slow to come alive,
you take up points that your know give the students trouble. You
lead them through difficult problems. The entire class hour becomes
like those few golden moments at the end of an old-fashioned lecture
when a few students manage to rise above the system and gather around
your desk."
MORRISON-MORRISON-MORRISON-MORRISON-MORRISON-MORRISON
I know from experience (Hake 1987) that there may be at least two
problems in implementing the Gutenberg lecture method:
1. It's not easy to induce students to study the text before the
lecture. But the "Just in Time Teaching" (JITT) strategy (Novak et
al. 1999) may be a solution.
2. Most textbooks are not, in fact, "optimally bound" for learning,
and are not based on cognitive/education research.
For a recent article on the melding of the Gutenberg Lecture Method,
the interactive-lecture Peer Instruction Method (Mazur 1997, Fagan et
al. 2002), "Just in Time Teaching" (Novak et al. 1999), and a
research-based text see the exemplary Harvard work of Crouch & Mazur
(2001).
Honan closes his essay with a depressing note: "To be sure, the mass
lecture, sometimes derided as 'auctioneering' or 'hog calling,' is
still the dominant form of instruction at most major universities."
One reason for this is that in disciplines other than physics
(Stockstad 2001) there's little solid evidence that passive-student
lectures are not supremely effective in promoting student learning.
In fact such lecture success is often enthusiastically indicated by
the hallowed student evaluations that many university administrators
mistakenly use to gauge the cognitive (not just affective) impact of
courses.
Lesson #3 of Hake (2002b) is:
"Lesson 3. HIGH-QUALITY STANDARDIZED TESTS OF THE COGNITIVE AND
AFFECTIVE IMPACT OF COURSES ARE ESSENTIAL FOR GAUGING THE RELATIVE
EFFECTIVENESS OF NON-TRADITIONAL EDUCATIONAL METHODS.
. . . . . As far as I know, disciplines other than physics,
astronomy (Adams et al. 2000; Zeilik et al. 1997, 1998, 1999), and
possibly economics (Saunders 1991, Kennedy & Siegfried 1997, Chizmar
& Ostrosky 1998, Allgood and Walstad 1999) have yet to develop any
such tests and therefore cannot effectively gauge either the need for
or the efficacy of their reform efforts. In my opinion, ALL
DISCIPLINES SHOULD CONSIDER THE CONSTRUCTION OF HIGH-QUALITY
STANDARDIZED TESTS OF ESSENTIAL INTRODUCTORY COURSE CONCEPTS."
(See Hake 2002b for the references.)
Hake, R.R. 2002b. "Lessons from the physics education reform effort."
Conservation Ecology 5(2): 28; online at
<http://www.consecol.org/vol5/iss2/art28>. "Conservation Ecology," is
a FREE "peer-reviewed journal of integrative science and fundamental
policy research" with about 11,000 subscribers in about 108 countries.
Mazur, E. 1997. "Peer instruction: a user's manual." Prentice Hall;
online at <http://galileo.harvard.edu/>.
Morrison, R. 1986. "The Lecture System in Teaching Science," in
"Undergraduate Education in Chemistry and Physics: Proceedings of the
Chicago Conferences on Liberal Education," No. 1, edited by R.R. Rice
(Univ. of Chicago), p. 50-58.