Don't Give Up On The Lecture - Summary PDF

COM101- Don’t Give Up On The Lecture Summary (WORD File). The author starts off by stating that when students are in their classrooms listening to lectures, some of them fidget around, some of them sleep in the back of the classroom, while others are way too busy writing in their notebook...

COM101- Don’t Give Up On The Lecture Summary (WORD File). The author starts off by stating that when students are in their classrooms listening to lectures, some of them fidget around, some of them sleep in the back of the classroom, while others are way too busy writing in their notebooks to look at what the lecturer is getting at. The author then goes on to say that in today’s world lectures are often looked down upon. He mentions the changing perceptions of lectures in the classroom. It argues that lectures are becoming less popular and even seen as outdated by society, with a preference for student-led activities. He states that this change is not anything new, and the article points to a recent interview at the Atlantic featuring David Thornburg, who declared that “lectures created a depressing experience for him when he was in school”. The author also talks about other historical figures who also challenged traditional lecture-based learning styles: Paulo Friere’s 1970 Pedagogy of the Oppressed, A lecturing teacher who was casted as an arrogant imperialist. Author also states that in 1997, Allison King coined the flip expression “Sage on the stage” although more than half of king's article consisted of ideas for working in small group approaches into otherwise lecture centric courses, she also stated that she was in no way looking to eliminate the lectures entirely. Nevertheless, there is an immense value in lectures, and it must not be written off as boring and ineffective teaching. The text talks about the 2010 study from Harvard Kennedy school “is traditional teaching really that bad” where Guido Scwerdt and Amelie Wupperman tried to quantify Allison King’s “ Sage on on the stage” model of education as compared to it’s counterpart “guide on the side”, which teachers were designed to give an activity or learn experience for students and step back from giving them direct instruction as they’ll normally do, as a result of this experiment, students who are exposed to lecture more than other classroom activity showed significant learning gain than those who weren’t. The author said one problem with this study was that it doesn’t consider that some teachers prefer lecturing because they’re good at it. While others like group work because they’re comfortable managing it. If educators can agree that students have different learning styles, then teachers should also be able to have different teaching styles to match their strengths.  Mary Burgen in her article defends lectures by saying teachers play important roles in helping students understand big ideas. She also said that showing deep knowledge and passion for a subject is valuable even if society looks down upon it. She also added that lecturing is a skill like painting or music and also requires great dedication and practice to master. Although some people argue that lectures hurt student confidence and make it hard for them to stay focussed Mary Burgen pointed out that feeling lost in the discussion class can be even more discouraging than struggling to understand quietly in lecture. The text also points out that TED talks are good examples of why lectures still work; they feature interesting topics, engaging speakers and give the audience time to reflect.