My beef with Lectures.

And why students are not spherical cows

Spending the past 17 years continuously in education I’ve come to realise something…I don’t really like the way we do education. Fortunately I’m about to spend the next 3 years studying for a PhD in Chemical Education, to try and address some of my concerns.

Those who know me have likely been asked to coffee, for a cheeky interview. This tirade has been caused, at least partly, by a growing dependency of caffeine but largely to satisfy my natural curiosity in what most people find mundane. I spoke to people from a broad range of subjects: the arts, humanities, and science. I’d just like to say a massive thank you to everyone who gave me their time. Or who had me bodily force myself and my notebook upon them. I am grateful and apologetic respectively.

Summary

1. Lectures do not provide an effective, communicative, engaging, or really enjoyable platform for education.
2. Lectures should be recorded. All of them. In video.
3. There is a greater need for dialogue and engagement between students and educators.

Introduce myself

To completely understand this article it’s probably worth knowing a bit about me: I’ve just finished my four year Master of Environmental Science at the University of Southampton, England. Assuming I’ve passed (gosh I hope I’ve passed), I’m about to embark upon a PhD in Chemical Education at the same University. I’ve always been fascinated by education and science. At the time of choosing my degree I wasn’t 100% sure it was where I wanted to go, but 4 years later, and I’m like 95% certain it is.

When I arrived at primary school, younger, shorter, and frankly stupider that I am now, I couldn’t quite get my head around the idea of being in the same seat for any extended period of time. I would just get up and walk around. Had my reception teacher not been the calm pool of patience she was, I imagine she would find this quite testing. It’s not that I didn’t want to learn, that I have a disability, or need special attention. It just means that every now and again I have to go and walk around. I’m just really not that good at staying still. I’m 22 and this is still a very real part of my life. I can’t do anything in one sitting, because I really don’t sit for that long.

It was only at 18 that I realised this wasn’t a hindrance. I revised standing up and walking around, I stuck my revision on the walls and ceiling so I could stand up, stand my bed, balancing at funny angles. This coincided with undoubtedly the best academic performance of my life I had seen to date. Aged 18. That’s 13 years I had spent in a classroom, struggling to stay seated. Not once had my tendency to move around seen as anything other than a hindrance. It’s not a hindrance, it’s a path I have to take to learn thing. Some people read aloud, I read on tiptoes and lunges.

I personally loath the word “dumb” or “stupid”, and I certainly am neither. I’ve put a lot of effort into showing how motivated, if not necessarily academically gifted, I am. As much as working this out for myself could be seen as a right of passage, why wasn’t is suggested to me earlier? Why didn’t one person who taught me, over 13 years, even acknowledge that I’m a fidget-er and that this is okay?

Sphere Cows

I want to talk about lectures. Typical lectures. Turn up for 45 minutes, sit, listen, (learn), leave. You know…lectures. I have a fundamental issues with them, and their idea of learning. Until you get to university lectures are a strange, mythical things. And then suddenly they’re status quo. It’s like turning up to a party where all the lights are turned off, and everyone has a torch, but no one ever said that a) the lights would be off, or b) you should bring a torch, and c) no one makes any effort to get you a torch. And then you’re tested on your ability to not fumble around in the dark.

“It feels like some of the lecturers just go through the motions, and don’t really mean what they’re saying, or connect with me”

I believe my entire argument can be summarised simply by looking at seating you find in many lecture halls: fixed, tiered, swing-down , fixed desk, aisles. These rooms can house hundred of students, assuming no two people next to each other wish to write simultaneously. Logically these rooms are the most efficient way of dispensing knowledge to the most people. In itself efficiency is great and fine, but this is spherical-cow-style-efficiency. For those who are unfamiliar, spherical cows have become an analogy for the scientific method’s ignorance or simplification of complex, not easily quantified, factors. Unfortunately, spherical cows are not common in real life, and even less so in classrooms.

Simply directing knowledge at a lot of students does not mean they are taking it in, and certainly does not mean they are being educated. This objective epitomises my objection to my experience in current education: blindness efficiency.

The (Boring) Crux

Students regularly miss lectures, this is a fact. I myself have not attended every lecture I could have, and not always for good reason all the time. To me this begs the question: Why is this so okay?

In short, it’s because they’re boring. Not fun to attend. Quotes from my interview will probably sum this up best.

“It feels like I’m just taking notes so I don’t get bored, or fall asleep”

“I kind of feel a moral obligation to turn up, even if I know it’s going to be a terrible lecture”

“If I stop making notes I stop listening or phase out”

“I don’t like being talked at, it’s just a massive wall of text”

“The one lecture I have a week is so boring — once we get the essay question people don’t listen or take notes”

“Not many lecturers do anything other than talk at you”

Despite many seeing them as boring, lectures are very, very important.

I suppose this comes down to how exactly we define the job of the lecturer. It seems to me that many are of the opinion that lecturers must simply provide the knowledge outlined in module summaries, and examined by whatever method. And then leave. As lecturers have control over syllabuses, and also a supposed great degree of understanding of the material within it, what they say in lectures is important.

The thing about lectures is: they only happen once, and you’re expected to take of all the things which get said, because they’re all (in theory) relevant and important to knowledge AND the grades of the student.

Wait, what?

For me, I peak at about 20 minutes into a lecture, after that I get droopy, especially mid semester

Here is the ground I stand on: we should not be chastising anybody for losing concentration for a minute. Realistically that’s all it takes, one stray thought: “is my phone on silent?”, “who am I cooking dinner for?”, “gosh, I really wish I had a coffee”. Or even worse, that person two rows up is hacking up a lung. Again. They should see a doctor.

That’s it. You’re left playing catch up for an entire lecture. It seems reasonable to state, in my experience and that of the people I have spoken to, that knowledge later in a lecture, depends on concepts built early on.

Even missing one sentence can lead to a downward cycle. This works for the entire semester as well, missing one lecture (especially early on) is really negative

Given that lectures are both boring, and require at least an hour of very strict, unbroken concentration upon one point, I feel my belief that they are broken is not unfounded.

I put so much effort into just writing everything down that I never actually take it in until I come to read it later.

To anyone who states this is not a long period to concentrate for, I propose a 10 minute mindfulness mediation: something I partake in daily. I’ve been doing this for at least a year. I cannot make it past 60…or 10 seconds without my mind going somewhere unbidden. People literally dedicate their entire lives to focusing upon a single point. It’s not easy. It does not happen to the majority of people the majority of the time — the demographic education should reach.

Humans are not machines, and education is a human process.

Recording

I propose that video recording is one step towards solving this problem. By providing a freely accessible, well produced visual and audio recording of what has happened, students can re listen or re-watch as and when they see fit. When is best for them. Pausing, rewinding, or skipping whenever they need. The knowledge is there for them to take. Plus educators can be far more certain that subjects, concepts, or points have been covered in the lectures.

Videos in education are becoming recognised as a tool for such great good. Harvard’s infamous CS50 course is filmed and made entirely available as a MOOC (let’s not talk about that now). David Milan, the charismatic head whom I admire from afar, states very explicitly that lectures are recorded and even transcribed, meaning students can sit there and listen. Take it in. Experience the lecture.

I recorded all of my lectures past 2nd year. What really surprised me was how much I would miss, even though I maintained very detailed notes. When re-listening to recordings I’d pick up on little things: a good analogy, an impromptu reference to author or institute, dropping hints for exams. These are things I would have almost certainly missed, and which I can 100% pinpoint to marks I otherwise would not have gained.

I don’t think that audio is enough either. The quality of recording is commonly…poor. It varies with where you’re sitting, the people around you, how loud your lecturer is. You’d really be surprised how loud a pencil can be when it’s right next to your microphone. They also miss the visual part of lectures. Although it’s relatively common for lecturers to print off the presentation they’re about to give, and allow students to annotate their own copy, this isn’t the whole game.

“Self-recorded lecturers are useless and poor quality”

Neither myself or anyone I spoke to had lectures video recorded in a consistent manner. I have one lecturer (Simon Kemp, whom I admire greatly) who used the Panopto framework, allowing the student view back lecturers, screens, and audio as and when they please.

But what if no one turns up?

This presents a problem: students may simply not turn up to lectures if they can watch them online for free whenever they want, 3 days before the exam. I have two responses to this: 1) So what? 2) Change what we’re turning up to.

So what? If lecturers simply want to get the knowledge across, videos are doing that. They are doing it very clearly and measurably. If that’s what you want to achieve then you’ve done it, and it’s up tot the students to watch it, as it is up to them to turn up to lectures. In fact it’s probably easier to monitor how much a person watches a video, and how frequently, than it is for one lecture.

Change what we’re turning up to. If students can watch an entire lecture before hand, this opens up 45-60 minutes (at least) where something else can take place: interaction. Interaction with each other or with educators.

These sessions provide opportunity for much further discussion, which I hope to undertake. But basically, objective based learning, e.g. problem sets, can be given to students. Which they can then handle how they see fit. If they feel comfortable to go away and do it by themselves, off they go. If like me, they can do 20 minutes, then have to walk around, they can. If they want to work in a groups of 2, 4, or 10, then they can go crazy and work in groups, with coffee, laughing and talking. If they need help, they can get it, much more personally and without fear of judgement from those around them.

Fixing This

I fail to believe that every student is interested in every lecture, and every point we study

I understand I’m not going to fix education everywhere for everyone, but I’ll probably try for a bit, before really accepting that I cannot. I realise there is no panacea for this. I understand attendance and participation is going to cause me problems. Getting people on board, and under full commitment is likely going to contribute to hair loss. But let’s open up a dialogue about it. Let’s speak to each other. Because that’s what human, social, and knowledge systems require.

By the time you get to University, it’s time to be treated as an adult. I do not believe part of being an adult is being talked at continuously. Monologues are unbearable and infrequent in day to day life.

People don’t really ask questions, because the lecturer is so bad at answering them on the spot.

If we wish to inspire learning outside of strict learning environments, if we wish to let students choose the best way and time to put knowledge into their heads, if we want to encourage dynamic application of knowledge by students, we are going about this in the wrong way. We are presenting one, finite situation in which learning can take place, in which we receive barely any dialogue with the people teaching us. A disconnection is being made. We need to reconnect the people teaching with the people learning.

Yes, it is important to understand respect and hierarchies, what is and is not appropriate in a professional environment. But this is being implemented at the expense of giving students a wider, accurate image of what the real world wants from us, as professionals. This is not how we inspire innovation.

When an open atmosphere is created, students and lecturers take advantage of it

I actually learn a lot by watching others make mistakes

I have a very vivid memory from my first year, of seeing a lecturer (who would stand in front of 250 of us) just on the campus, and getting that feeling of butterflies in my stomach. As if he was a celebrity. Someone who does not exist in real life. Is this what we want from the people who teach us? Respect gained at the cost of a mythical status?

Addressing this is not going to be easy. And I firmly believe I am about to dedicate a good portion of my life to addressing many of these issues. Learning isn’t going to be all smiles all of the time, boring, stressful, and seemingly impossible challenges are part of life, and education would be foolish to ignore that.

I have one or two optional lectures a week, which are open to people in every year. I attend everyone, because of how valuable they are. I’m amazed that so many people just don’t turn up to them!

But I stand by what I said: when you’re talking to a group of people, you are talking to a group of individual human beings, who deserve the same opportunities and respect as everyone else you meet. I believe the future of education lies in giving people the materials to learn in whatever way is best for them. Not to see learning as such a specific process, but rather as a broad, conceptual pathway that people can walk along however they choose.