Higher Education: What Are They Getting?

Technology may very well be the ultimate destroyer of higher education. For example in a recent piece in Science the author states:

...says he’s started using such techniques even in large classes. “My introductory biology course has gotten up to 700 students,” he says. “For the ultimate class session—I don’t say lecture—I’m showing PowerPoint slides, but everything is a question and I use clickers and random calling. Somebody droning on for 15 minutes at a time and then doing cookbook labs isn’t interesting.” .... estimates that scaling up such active learning approaches could enable success for tens of thousands of students who might otherwise drop or fail STEM courses.

 Powerpoint slides are really an bane to instruction and 700 students is just a crowd and not a class. How can one learn in a crowd of 700 and worse the use of these real time entry devices are annoying interruptions to an individual trying to learn.

The old chalk board had and has a place. For example by following a lecture being delivered on a chalk board one looks, then records, and if the class is small enough then asks questions. The use of all these high tech annoyances are counter productive. Every individual thinks differently.

Problem sets, a la Lander and MITX7.01, is the best way to go. Get your hands and mind engaged in doing what is being taught, finding where your understanding fails, correct it, and iterate to learning. That is reality as well. Not clickers!