Spring Break
Course redesign handicaps motivation
Force-fed classes may get the job done at the expense of student responsibility
By: Kaitlyn Drinkwater
Issue date: 2/25/09 Section: Opinion
It could be argued that math and languages are the most difficult subjects to teach. Both involve teaching the mind to process things in completely new ways and require extensive, repetitive practice. Some people are innately capable, and some just can't seem to get it. At the college level, they also share the expectation that in four classes out of five, your professor will speak a language you don't. Maybe it's these common challenges that are behind the prevalence of online, "interactive" learning programs in these subjects.
In the long battle against laziness and failing grades, the latest panacea is the Internet. In every corner of academia, professors have discovered the Internet and realized they can force us to do the homework we should be doing on our own while the computer handles the labor of administering and grading the work, providing professors with a printout of grades and their students with greater enlightenment.
The Texas A&M Math Department is pilot testing a course redesign in a few sections of its Math 141 classes. Lectures are watched online before class in short video segments rather than being administered during class. Homework assignments are also completed online. To fill class time, students are divided into small groups and complete group assignments over the material covered in the videos. To compensate for the amount of time spent working outside of class, 75 minute class periods are shortened to 50 and those classes meet only twice a week.
The program, developed with the assistance of a $350,000 grant from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, seems like a good one. It's built on sound principles, such as students learn more easily from peers than from their teachers (of course, this relies on the assumption that the peers know what they're doing) and some less sound ones - for example, the idea that students will learn as well from the static videos as from an interactive person.
The video lectures are time consuming, yet fail to deliver the material as effectively as a live lecturer. Students can't ask the video to phrase something a different way or review a background concept. Review sessions and the availability of the professor in class serve to fill this gap, but cannot do it well enough. Despite all this, the greatest flaw in the system is the attitude that it conveys to students: that we need to be (and will be, like it or not) force-fed our course work.
In the long battle against laziness and failing grades, the latest panacea is the Internet. In every corner of academia, professors have discovered the Internet and realized they can force us to do the homework we should be doing on our own while the computer handles the labor of administering and grading the work, providing professors with a printout of grades and their students with greater enlightenment.
The Texas A&M Math Department is pilot testing a course redesign in a few sections of its Math 141 classes. Lectures are watched online before class in short video segments rather than being administered during class. Homework assignments are also completed online. To fill class time, students are divided into small groups and complete group assignments over the material covered in the videos. To compensate for the amount of time spent working outside of class, 75 minute class periods are shortened to 50 and those classes meet only twice a week.
The program, developed with the assistance of a $350,000 grant from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, seems like a good one. It's built on sound principles, such as students learn more easily from peers than from their teachers (of course, this relies on the assumption that the peers know what they're doing) and some less sound ones - for example, the idea that students will learn as well from the static videos as from an interactive person.
The video lectures are time consuming, yet fail to deliver the material as effectively as a live lecturer. Students can't ask the video to phrase something a different way or review a background concept. Review sessions and the availability of the professor in class serve to fill this gap, but cannot do it well enough. Despite all this, the greatest flaw in the system is the attitude that it conveys to students: that we need to be (and will be, like it or not) force-fed our course work.
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