… in this Newsweek article featuring a group of great university professors.
Let’s look at how the reporter introduces the subject. Beginning of first paragraph:
There are few better fixes for insomnia than listening to a professor read her PowerPoint to you, slide by slide. And that can be a good thing, especially if you’ve been up all night playing Rock Band. But discovering a teacher who wakes you up instead of putting you to sleep is one of the most rewarding college experiences you can have…
Hey. I didn’t write it. Turns out I’m not the only one who knows most classroom PowerPoint use sucks.
The first featured professor has a fifty-student class. It’s a discussion class.
[Bob Goldberg] says the key is to let students know you notice them and keep them actively engaged at all times. For him, teaching is a lot like his chosen field of study. “It is really about experimentation,” says Goldberg, 65. He is constantly trying new things to get students involved: asking them to swab their cheeks for DNA analysis, tossing them heads of lettuce and asking, “Is this lettuce in its original form? What about this one?!” …Despite the class size, he wants all his students to know each other and feel comfortable participating in discussions. … Eden Maloney, class of 2012, was intimidated when Goldberg called her up to the front of the class to summarize a previous lecture (a Goldberg classroom staple), but, she says, “I learned not only critical analysis but also how to think clearly under pressure. Those skills are invaluable and go far beyond the classroom.”
This high-energy professor, a lad of 65, puts students on the spot. He calls them up to the front of the room to make presentations.
Another:
[William Flesch’s] goal in the classroom: to get students to argue with him. “If you agree with everything I’m saying, I’ve failed,” he says. He takes that philosophy to heart, baiting his students to get them to debate among themselves and asking them to design their papers in the same manner…
Yet another:
Every week [Kathleen] Canning lectures for an hour, then steps back to allow discussion. “It’s key to listen, to let the students grab the material, work with it, and get as far as they can,” she says.
Small sample, I know. And not all of these people have big classes. None of them have enormous classes, etc.
But what keeps coming across to UD is the human drama of their classrooms — a combination of eager passion on the part of the professor for the subject; an equally eager passion on his or her part for discussion and debate; an ability to set intelligent terms for the discussion through some lecturing; and, finally, what I’d call an instinctive sympathetic interest in the professor’s students.
It’s not that these professors are hams, grabbing people by the lapels; they’re simply energetic organized minds attracted to other minds. They’re sincerely interested in an intellectual connection with their students. They take their students seriously as intellects, that is; they’re not condescending, but rather provocative, demanding, leading them on…
**********
People want to be awakened.
PowerPoint is the opiate of the classes.
August 7th, 2009 at 10:18PM
"Above everything else—above library and books, degree programs, buildings and systems, administrators and religious ministers—teachers are what the university above all offers uniquely to its students…. There are many ways of getting an education, and books do not a university make. Teachers and students, however, do make a university. One does not need a university for books; they can be found at home and in libraries. But one does need a university to have a congress of teachers…. What the university uniquely gives—as a library cannot—is the personal interchange and influence of great teachers."
August 8th, 2009 at 7:08AM
Sometimes I wonder why I bother…
Of course you can get a little gizmo that allows you to control your Power Point presentation from anywhere in the classroom. You can go out into the class and "engage" with the students. It is kind of hard for a student to ignore you when you are in their face asking questions.
I’ve also had a student – at my invitation and spontaneously – give a quick ten minute presentation why GMO (genetically modified organisms) are NOT a good thing, despite my saying so.
There are many ways to nirvana.
Bill