The Shakespeare game or the DeLillo game, UD, what’ll it be? I thought we left turning learning into a game behind at an earlier stage in education than college or university? As Lotte Lenya would say: "Guess not.."
We’ve been here before. The guy teaches music history. He is a dean of Arts (conspicuously not A&S) at SMU.
"I mean, the lecture was an efficient way to deliver content a thousand years ago. It’s just not anymore."
For all subjects? I call BS. That is an unsupported assertion if I have ever seen one.
I don’t disagree with anything in this article in particular. I think all instructors would like the students to be familiar with the material before they enter the lecture hall, and technology may be the way to have that happen. "Inverting" the model has been stated policy in lecture courses since I started, anyway.
That’s far different than Powerpoint = bad.
This discussion has prompted me to think about it a bit more, and I think I will run an experiment this semester. I’m teaching a large (200+) General Chemistry section, and I will put aside the Powerpoint completely for a couple of lectures. Student opinion isn’t everything, but I will ask them what they think, anonymously, at the end of the course. Hope to report back then what I find.
As I listened to this story yesterday morning I thought to myself, "UD will make a big deal of this!" I figured the point she would be making, once again, is that anything that is bad for somebody, sometimes, must be bad for everybody, all the time. But after hearing the story I did not predict that the headline would refer to the subject of the story as the "Anti-PowerPoint Guy" since that was hardly the point he was trying to make. Sure, he says that the lecture is a inefficient method to deliver content but his solution is not to take away tools but to add new technologies to allow the students to become more aware of the subject before they come to class (btw, good luck with that).
I’m going to start my semester next week and the notion that my students will be better off if I, and everyone else, stopped using PowerPoint is a well intentioned but ignorant point of view. Are the students really going to understand where the plate tectonic boundaries are if I don’t show them a map? Or is it that the map will be better understood if I use an overhead transparency instead of a computer-based version of the same image? Perhaps they would be best off if I eschewed any electricity-based device and just drew the map on the board with chalk (after I had the white board replaced with the more pedagogically-pure chalk board). How about explaining the best way to distinguish volcanic rocks from their intrusive equivalents? Should I just talk about the differences in texture or maybe I could show a picture?
Of course the reasons to use PowerPoint (or Keynote or Acrobat) to make lectures better are not restricted to the sciences. Imagine trying to teach Art History with images. Of course, one could show the images without PowerPoint but why? Because somebody once gave a bad lecture on some subject in the English department using it?
This is not the first time I’ve made these objections but perhaps it is OK to counter a one-note argument with the same rebuttal. I don’t usually bother but "Anti-PowerPoint Guy" put my keyboard in motion. Perhaps Sarah Palin heard the same story and thought, "Ah ha, I knew it. Death Panels!"
Pete: I think if you scroll through my PowerPoint posts, most of them say somewhere that there are good and bad uses of PP. I’ve never denied that visual technologies of various sorts, including PP, can be important in art history, geology, etc. (Though I actually do think there’s an argument to be made that your drawing maps on the board in your classes might well be an excellent idea.)
The point I’ve made, and the anti-PP guy’s making, is that PP is over-used. It’s a crutch. It’s the way thousands of lazy teachers teach nothing. PP is not evil, and there’s even a place for it. But the reason this guy has emerged and is getting so much attention is that he’s noticed, like more and more people, what’s actually going on in many American university classrooms. And it ain’t just PP. It’s PP and clickers. It’s students gazing at personal crap on their laptops while PPs and clickers click by. The situation is so bad – students are complaining so loudly – that serious universities are beginning to take note.
1. My colleagues and I have so far disappointed every textbook publisher who came pushing clickers. I don’t see how this is going to help anyone other than the clicker vendors.
2. I have on several occasions told students who were clearly paying more attention to their laptops (and cell phones) than to the class, "If you want to do that in here, you’re going to have to go outside."
With regard to PP, no I didn’t re-read the many posts you have made on this subject and I doubt you ever said that PP is bad always and for everybody. I apologize if this came across as me trying to quote you. However, it is my impression that your argument is rarely as nuanced as, "PP is not evil, and there’s even a place for it." Your argument is usually as blunt as, "[PP] is the way thousands of lazy teachers teach nothing." In order for me to get to worried about this you need to establish what we called in high school debate as a comparative disadvantage and link this to PP. You seem to be saying that PP is not just a facilitator of this laziness but its cause. That somehow thousands of otherwise conscientious teacher became lazy the day the loaded PP on thier computer. This seems highly unlikely to me. Your attack on PP is so comprehensive that the message I’m getting (but perhaps not the one you are sending) is that lazy people use PP, I use PP, I must be lazy. (btw, I admit to often being lazy but PP had nothing to do with it. That’s just who I am.) It seems there is nothing wrong with your statement above but the truth of it would not be changed if modified as, "PP] is the way thousands of lazy teachers teach nothing as well as the way thousands of others teach great stuff with passion and vigor." The first part is true but by focusing on it so often, you give the impression that maybe the second part isn’t. I’m against lazy teaching as much as the next guy but taking away PP from a lazy teacher will just make a lazy teacher with chalk in his or her hand.
I understand the concept behind the thought that the students might get something out of me drawing the map on the board but this would take forever and any benefit would probably be lost by me conveying inaccurate information because I’m not a very good freehand drawer. The key here is to convey what we have observed. I also think having some slides with just words or mostly words in between the picture slides also help the students because I don’t have to stand with my back to the class while I write "Three kinds of rocks, Igneous, Sedimentary, Metamorphic." I can look at them as this info comes to them. I can see which ones of them seem puzzled or otherwise disengaged. This is information helps me be a better teacher and is available to me because I’m not looking at the stuff I already know. Also the students don’t have to try and read my handwriting.
The next time you’re in Houston, stop by one of my classes. In the mean time, keep up the good work.
I’m with you all the way (including your reasonable complaint that my PP rhetoric can sound totally rejectionist) until you write this:
I’m against lazy teaching as much as the next guy but taking away PP from a lazy teacher will just make a lazy teacher with chalk in his or her hand.
To this, I’d say maybe, maybe not.
One important component of the anti-PP (let me use that rejectionist phrase for convenience if I may) argument is in fact that intrinsic to the technology of PP and other in-class technologies (This is a crucial point to keep in mind: PP is seldom there by itself. Clickers, laptops, films — many other technologies typically accompany PP in the classroom.) is a strong invitation — accepted happily by some professors — to be lazy as well as inattentive to your students.
To read mechanically through bullet points. To look down at the machine instead of up at your students (And that being the case, why shouldn’t they use laptops? The professor isn’t socially engaging them; they needn’t socially engage the professor.). To reduce intellectual complexity to reductive lockstep point – next point making. The technology itself encourages this tendency to withdraw, to simplify, to avoid discussion. In short, not really to teach at all – merely to display and read information.
Sure, there are lazy chalk-users, Pete. But at least they’re standing – naked, if you want to use this guy’s word – in front of a group of people and in real time generating images and words on a board as they talk. Their brain’s doing something. By definition they cannot be as lazy, pre-packaged, and disengaged as PP allows a person – if they’re so inclined – to be.
August 16th, 2009 at 3:09PM
Hmm..
The Shakespeare game or the DeLillo game, UD, what’ll it be? I thought we left turning learning into a game behind at an earlier stage in education than college or university? As Lotte Lenya would say: "Guess not.."
We’ve been here before. The guy teaches music history. He is a dean of Arts (conspicuously not A&S) at SMU.
"I mean, the lecture was an efficient way to deliver content a thousand years ago. It’s just not anymore."
For all subjects? I call BS. That is an unsupported assertion if I have ever seen one.
Your (still) friend,
Bill
August 16th, 2009 at 4:20PM
This is very confusing…not sure whether it’s the writer or the dean who’s confused, though.
Is he saying:
1)learn the material to some extent through distance learning, games, etc and THEN come and have a regular class to discuss it in depth?
or
2)get rid of the classes and just do the technology-based stuff??
These are two entirely different approaches.
August 16th, 2009 at 5:39PM
I don’t disagree with anything in this article in particular. I think all instructors would like the students to be familiar with the material before they enter the lecture hall, and technology may be the way to have that happen. "Inverting" the model has been stated policy in lecture courses since I started, anyway.
That’s far different than Powerpoint = bad.
This discussion has prompted me to think about it a bit more, and I think I will run an experiment this semester. I’m teaching a large (200+) General Chemistry section, and I will put aside the Powerpoint completely for a couple of lectures. Student opinion isn’t everything, but I will ask them what they think, anonymously, at the end of the course. Hope to report back then what I find.
August 17th, 2009 at 7:34AM
As I listened to this story yesterday morning I thought to myself, "UD will make a big deal of this!" I figured the point she would be making, once again, is that anything that is bad for somebody, sometimes, must be bad for everybody, all the time. But after hearing the story I did not predict that the headline would refer to the subject of the story as the "Anti-PowerPoint Guy" since that was hardly the point he was trying to make. Sure, he says that the lecture is a inefficient method to deliver content but his solution is not to take away tools but to add new technologies to allow the students to become more aware of the subject before they come to class (btw, good luck with that).
I’m going to start my semester next week and the notion that my students will be better off if I, and everyone else, stopped using PowerPoint is a well intentioned but ignorant point of view. Are the students really going to understand where the plate tectonic boundaries are if I don’t show them a map? Or is it that the map will be better understood if I use an overhead transparency instead of a computer-based version of the same image? Perhaps they would be best off if I eschewed any electricity-based device and just drew the map on the board with chalk (after I had the white board replaced with the more pedagogically-pure chalk board). How about explaining the best way to distinguish volcanic rocks from their intrusive equivalents? Should I just talk about the differences in texture or maybe I could show a picture?
Of course the reasons to use PowerPoint (or Keynote or Acrobat) to make lectures better are not restricted to the sciences. Imagine trying to teach Art History with images. Of course, one could show the images without PowerPoint but why? Because somebody once gave a bad lecture on some subject in the English department using it?
This is not the first time I’ve made these objections but perhaps it is OK to counter a one-note argument with the same rebuttal. I don’t usually bother but "Anti-PowerPoint Guy" put my keyboard in motion. Perhaps Sarah Palin heard the same story and thought, "Ah ha, I knew it. Death Panels!"
Your (still) friend,
-Pete
August 17th, 2009 at 7:46AM
Pete: I think if you scroll through my PowerPoint posts, most of them say somewhere that there are good and bad uses of PP. I’ve never denied that visual technologies of various sorts, including PP, can be important in art history, geology, etc. (Though I actually do think there’s an argument to be made that your drawing maps on the board in your classes might well be an excellent idea.)
The point I’ve made, and the anti-PP guy’s making, is that PP is over-used. It’s a crutch. It’s the way thousands of lazy teachers teach nothing. PP is not evil, and there’s even a place for it. But the reason this guy has emerged and is getting so much attention is that he’s noticed, like more and more people, what’s actually going on in many American university classrooms. And it ain’t just PP. It’s PP and clickers. It’s students gazing at personal crap on their laptops while PPs and clickers click by. The situation is so bad – students are complaining so loudly – that serious universities are beginning to take note.
August 17th, 2009 at 9:50AM
Margaret,
First, let’s start with some common ground.
1. My colleagues and I have so far disappointed every textbook publisher who came pushing clickers. I don’t see how this is going to help anyone other than the clicker vendors.
2. I have on several occasions told students who were clearly paying more attention to their laptops (and cell phones) than to the class, "If you want to do that in here, you’re going to have to go outside."
With regard to PP, no I didn’t re-read the many posts you have made on this subject and I doubt you ever said that PP is bad always and for everybody. I apologize if this came across as me trying to quote you. However, it is my impression that your argument is rarely as nuanced as, "PP is not evil, and there’s even a place for it." Your argument is usually as blunt as, "[PP] is the way thousands of lazy teachers teach nothing." In order for me to get to worried about this you need to establish what we called in high school debate as a comparative disadvantage and link this to PP. You seem to be saying that PP is not just a facilitator of this laziness but its cause. That somehow thousands of otherwise conscientious teacher became lazy the day the loaded PP on thier computer. This seems highly unlikely to me. Your attack on PP is so comprehensive that the message I’m getting (but perhaps not the one you are sending) is that lazy people use PP, I use PP, I must be lazy. (btw, I admit to often being lazy but PP had nothing to do with it. That’s just who I am.) It seems there is nothing wrong with your statement above but the truth of it would not be changed if modified as, "PP] is the way thousands of lazy teachers teach nothing as well as the way thousands of others teach great stuff with passion and vigor." The first part is true but by focusing on it so often, you give the impression that maybe the second part isn’t. I’m against lazy teaching as much as the next guy but taking away PP from a lazy teacher will just make a lazy teacher with chalk in his or her hand.
I understand the concept behind the thought that the students might get something out of me drawing the map on the board but this would take forever and any benefit would probably be lost by me conveying inaccurate information because I’m not a very good freehand drawer. The key here is to convey what we have observed. I also think having some slides with just words or mostly words in between the picture slides also help the students because I don’t have to stand with my back to the class while I write "Three kinds of rocks, Igneous, Sedimentary, Metamorphic." I can look at them as this info comes to them. I can see which ones of them seem puzzled or otherwise disengaged. This is information helps me be a better teacher and is available to me because I’m not looking at the stuff I already know. Also the students don’t have to try and read my handwriting.
The next time you’re in Houston, stop by one of my classes. In the mean time, keep up the good work.
-PC
August 17th, 2009 at 10:34AM
I’m with you all the way (including your reasonable complaint that my PP rhetoric can sound totally rejectionist) until you write this:
To this, I’d say maybe, maybe not.
One important component of the anti-PP (let me use that rejectionist phrase for convenience if I may) argument is in fact that intrinsic to the technology of PP and other in-class technologies (This is a crucial point to keep in mind: PP is seldom there by itself. Clickers, laptops, films — many other technologies typically accompany PP in the classroom.) is a strong invitation — accepted happily by some professors — to be lazy as well as inattentive to your students.
To read mechanically through bullet points. To look down at the machine instead of up at your students (And that being the case, why shouldn’t they use laptops? The professor isn’t socially engaging them; they needn’t socially engage the professor.). To reduce intellectual complexity to reductive lockstep point – next point making. The technology itself encourages this tendency to withdraw, to simplify, to avoid discussion. In short, not really to teach at all – merely to display and read information.
Sure, there are lazy chalk-users, Pete. But at least they’re standing – naked, if you want to use this guy’s word – in front of a group of people and in real time generating images and words on a board as they talk. Their brain’s doing something. By definition they cannot be as lazy, pre-packaged, and disengaged as PP allows a person – if they’re so inclined – to be.