Opinion: Lectures are a thing of the past

Big lectures are an outdated teaching style. Smaller, more personal classes are simply better.

Imagine the situation: you enrolled in a course called “Interdisciplinary Perceptual Psychology of Architecture”. For some reason, you’ve always wanted to take this course. You go to class, push the doors and BOOM. This is a lecture for 100 people. Noticing an empty seat at the end of the class, you walk past four people, two of whom are somehow already asleep. The professor starts talking and you realize that you can barely hear him, but you can barely make out what he is saying about the microphone not being set up for the class yet. For the next hour and a half, you skip every third or fourth word the professor says, so your notes look like half-translated hieroglyphs. Eventually, you disconnect and start watching Netflix on your laptop.

Anyone who has ever listened to a big lecture has probably had a similar experience. Boring lecture courses are enough to make anyone completely lose interest in a subject they may have been really passionate about. To ensure that students can retain class materials potentially for the rest of their lives, NYU should phase out lectures entirely and only provide smaller class sizes.

It is widely known that smaller class sizes help students to better absorb the learning material. Research reported that small writing classes have resulted in increased retention at the college level because they allow students to receive adequate feedback on their work. Feedback is critical – if a learner is only told whether they are correct or not, without some descriptive feedback on how they can do better, they will not have the tools to really improve. Smaller class sizes also encourage students to ask questions, offer ideas, and just participate. more often with your instructors what they might not be able to do in a room with a crowd of other students who also want to participate. teachers can individually monitor the successes and failures of their students and adjust their lesson plans accordingly. Having 100 or more people in a class makes tracking the learning of each individual student extremely difficult.

To be fair, most of the studies presented are more focused on the effects of small class sizes in lower grades, near kindergarten, and found that by high school, the impact of larger class sizes was negligible if students were exposed to smaller class sizes in elementary school. school. young age. But in high school, a large class will consist of 40 students, and not 100 – this is a big difference.

Also, the bigger problem students face in lecture courses is simply boredom.

“Some professors just don’t give me the energy I want to maintain and I end up getting bored and falling asleep,” said Stern student David Green.

The reason lectures seem boring This is because the professors don’t really seem to care about engaging their listeners, but rather about keeping the presentation as simple and effective as possible. At a lecture, a professor can give a lesson in a straightforward, rehearsed manner, with almost no deviations. In addition, the lecture can be easily recorded and distributed on the Internet for anyone who wants to watch it again. This means that lectures are not meant to help students succeed; they are designed to facilitate learning.

“Large lecture courses give me more control over what I study, and I feel like I absorb the most information during large lectures,” said Tandon student Mihir Pabbi. “Large lectures also don’t require my full attention all the time, so I can easily switch off and practice on a topic that is more difficult for me, and then return to the lecture when that topic is being discussed.”

Even looking at the benefits of lectures, we see the same problemA: It’s too easy to set up. Nothing prevents students from losing their concentration in the classroom and doing other things. When slides, Zoom recordings, and a professor’s dental notes are posted online, lectures become even more optional. While Pabbie may use this time to brush up on material of which he is less confident, others may not have that opportunity.

My mother used to be a teacher, meaning I heard from her about the difficulty of teaching a group of strangers – so obviously I’m not going to make anyone’s job difficult. Instead of, my goal is to make teachers’ responsibilities more manageable so they can focus on delivering content to students in a more engaging way. Thus, students will remember information better. NYU is fully aware of the problems associated with lecture courses, which is why we have a recitation system that acts as a remedy for the problems of the lecture system. But at some point it makes you wonder why we even try to fix such a fundamentally flawed learning style when we can just replace it.

Small discussion-based classes are not a new concept. Our neighboring Eugene Lang College of the New School has programs focused on using interactive classrooms that involve students in daily discussions. Evjw.org en Some of our own schools, Humanities Studies and the Gallatin School of Individual Education, offer smaller classes, but not everyone has the opportunity to attend these schools. If university-wide small, non-lecturical classes were offered, it would benefit all students, not just those who are limited in their programs. The complete removal of lecture courses from NYU would be a major restructuring, potentially requiring additional teachers to be hired, classrooms to be redesigned, and the entire curriculum to be restructured. It’s not easy, but it the right direction of work in order for the university to position itself as a leader in education. It will also, in the end, be a huge step for NYU to help other schools improve their student learning practices and recruit more qualified people.

The WSN Opinion Section strives to post ideas worthy of discussion. The views expressed in the “Opinion” section are solely those of the author.

Contact Noah Zaldivar at [email protected]