 IntroductionTwo Cheers For LecturingAsking and Answering Questions |
Class Discussion?Chalk Talk
Grapevine |
Interest in quality teaching seems to be growing. Donald Kennedy, president of Stanford University, recently criticized the dominance of research over teaching at Stanford and pledged to uplift the status of teaching. Columbia University is now establishing 10 endowed chairs for outstanding teachers and may soon add more. At the University of Colorado, the President's Teaching Scholars program identifies those with talent and experience to serve as mentors for younger instructors. And, in a recent report that has received national attention, Ernest Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation, calls for broadening the definition of scholarship to include the discovery of new knowledge, the integration of knowledge, the application of knowledge, and teaching. In Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (Princeton University Press), he suggests that this expanded view of scholarship will lead to an improved faculty-reward system and, hence, to better teaching.
Boyer's views are intriguing, but I'm not sure the issue can be addressed by semantics. I argued in the first edition of The Teaching Economist that even if quality teaching is not rewarded by our institutions, we should want to be better teachers because teaching interested students is more fun and more personally rewarding. Incidentally, the response to that first newsletter has been most gratifying; many of you requested subscriptions. I have also begun receiving some of your teaching ideas; read about them in The Grapevine
To summarize the message from the first newsletter, rely on common experience to have something good to say, then say it well. All this seems obvious, but, as I said, success is a study of the obvious. This newsletter takes a closer look at what we do most of the time: lecture. Much of what I am about to say you may already know. But think of yourself as a prospector of ideas. All you need come away with is one or two good ones.
Before the invention of the printing press, lectures represented the most efficient means of transmitting large amounts of information. Now that we have progressed to desktop publishing, perhaps we should ask why we continue to lecture so much. Well, we do assign readings in our courses, and most of us expect students to spend more time reading and working with the material than they do in class. Ideally, lectures expand on the required readings and bring them to life. Lectures can also be more selective than the readings and can focus on topics of special interest. With lectures, we can weave current events and local color from our college or community into the material.
Lectures are efficient ways of conveying a large amount of material; they are good at laying out facts, relationships, theories, and other material that must be presented in a logical sequence. Lectures are also live theater. They can convey our enthusiasm for the material, and the very process of going through an economic problem can show students how to think through the steps in a logical way. The lecture approach affords us maximum control of the class agenda; we can present material in any order we choose, and can encourage or discourage questions.
But lectures are not well suited for all topics, particularly issues involving value judgments. Moreover, the effectiveness of lectures depends on the effectiveness of the lecturer (let's face it, some lecturers need to work on their delivery). Finally, the typical student's attention span is said to stretch less than a half hour, so a fifty minute lecture loses many students along the way. In fact, there is no guarantee that students are thinking much even during the first half hour. Students can put their pens on automatic pilot to take notes while their brains go elsewhere. But we don't want our students to be note-taking machines. After all, if class notes were the only purpose of attendance, we could save everyone a lot of time by simply distributing our lecture notes and sending students home.
The big problem with lectures is that most represent one-way communication. In fact, students usually prefer lectures to other forums, such as class discussion, because lectures involve little student participation. Since students are often reluctant to ask questions, particularly in large classes, only the looks on their faces and the results of exams provide the instructor with feedback. By now, most of us can "read" our class through the unconscious body language students transmit. Some students feign interest when they are bored, but the ruse is easily unmasked (and most students make no attempt to conceal their boredom). Teaching is all the more challenging when facing a class of zombies. If this is your problem, you must mix up your delivery, get students more involved, ask questions, dance on the desk -- do something different because your current approach is not working.
Ask questions that let you know what the students are learning. Questions that are especially uninformative are: "Does everyone understand?" "Is that clear?" "Do you have any question?" The typical response is silence, which you incorrectly take to mean understanding. A question requiring a detailed response shows you very directly whether your message is getting across. Ask a specific question that flows from your presentation. For example, you might ask "Why does the aggregate demand curve slope downward?" Or, "Why can't firms in perfect competition earn economic profit in the long run?" Try not to rely exclusively on those same few students who usually volunteer to answer your questions. You could select names randomly as they turn up on a deck of index cards.
When you ask the class questions, you must be patient. Don't be too eager to answer your own questions. Silence is very unsettling to students, but it gets their attention and it reminds them that they have not been paying attention. If you ask a particular student a question, give that student a chance to respond, but move along to others if a response does not appear forthcoming. Don't focus on a single student for too long. The silence that follows a question posed to the entire class is different from the silence that follows the question addressed to a particular student. The first sort of silence can be healthy; the second can seem mean-spirited.
Questions from students are another good way to elicit feedback and to break up the lecture. As you know, students are often reluctant to ask questions, especially in large classes, and the comments they do make are sometimes vague and squishy. A student might say, "You lost me," or "I don't know what's going on." That sort of response is better than none, but not much better. Reviewing all you have said often wastes other students' time. Encourage students to develop the mental discipline to ask a more specific question. At what point did they get lost? What is their current understanding of some of the particular topic under discussion? Let students know that you welcome all questions, but you especially appreciate the question that specifically identifies their problem. Regardless of how poorly phrased the question, fashion it into something that will aid your presentation -- make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. And don't be too quick to show how smart you are; first see if another student can answer the question.
We usually try to make our lectures as clear and complete as possible, but a thorough lecture may crowd out student questions. If you agree that student questions add variety to your presentation, then consider leaving a few stones unturned in your lectures as a way of prompting questions. For example, in my class of 300 students, sometimes for a change of pace I present just the bones of the topic, relying on student questions to flesh out the body. Thus, rather than tell them all they need to know first time through, I keep the initial presentation relatively brief, then backfill with student questions. I am not recommending you do this all the time, nor am I suggesting that you leave out central points or points that cannot otherwise be found in the textbook. But, rather than offering a five-course meal, serve the students "lean cuisine" on occasion.
Suppose you have raised an issue, provided a few facts to establish a frame of reference, and asked for comments. Nothing happens. The silence that sets in seems like a conspiracy and usually drives instructors back to the safely of lectures. Perhaps the biggest problem of discussion is students' unwillingness or inability to participate. Many students view discussions as a waste of time or, worse yet, as a source of humiliation. Class discussion teaches some students to improvise opinions on the spot and to substitute fast talk for thought. One dominant student with an opinion on everything, coupled with a classful of shy or indifferent students, results in an unproductive discussion.
If discussion is so difficult and, at times, so awkward, why bother? Consider the benefits of class discussion. Learning can be more fun during a stimulating discussion. Discussion includes students as active participants in the learning process and thereby can serve as a powerful motivator. Students may be more inclined to prepare for a class where their participation is valued. In a sense, discussion are more emotional than lectures and therefore draw students into the topic in a way that lectures cannot. Participation helps students develop basic social and academic skills by weighing the evidence, formulating an opinion, and evaluating the arguments of others.
A good discussion actually requires more preparation than a lecture. You must develop an issue worth discussing. Students need to have enough acquaintance with the topic to make intelligent contributions. Students should be told ahead of time what the topic will be and what they should read to prepare for it. Discussion is better suited for normative issues than positive issues. For example, the lecture is more appropriate for listing the various kinds of property programs, whereas the effects of poverty on the family and on the community might be better treated through discussion. As a general rule, you should rely on topic that can draw on students' common experience. That way, all students could potentially have something to contribute. And remember that students are usually armed more with feelings and sentiments than with facts or theory. Be sensitive to these feelings. Don't threaten or bully students. Students must often be drawn gently into these discussions.
Instructors who have given little thought to their use of the blackboard tend to make poor use of that teaching tool. Some instructors erase a little patch of board at a time -- just enough to squeeze in another topic. When class is over, the board is a crazy quilt of ideas. Someone just coming into the classroom would make little sense of it. Using the board effectively is physically and mentally demanding, but students get more from the combination of media than from a verbal presentation only.
Think of the blackboard as a large piece of writing paper. If you scribble all over the paper in no apparent order, anybody trying to uncover the connections among ideas will have difficulty following your reasoning. But if you use the board in an ordered way to present material in a logical sequence, students can see where you have been and where you are going. A logical ordering is important because some students are always trailing your presentation; they are one or two points behind and they need the written cues the blackboard provides.
Students usually write down whatever is written on the board. Since you don't have time to write everything you say on it, put only the central points on the board. First present the point verbally. Second, write the point on the board, saying each word as you write it. Finally, step back and read what you have written. This procedure helps students take good notes.
The blackboard is an especially effective medium for presenting graphs because students are able to see, in a step-by-step manner, how the graph was constructed and how curves shift. Before presenting the graph, take time to provide the economic intuition of what you are about to present. Many textbooks and instructors use graphs the way a drunk uses the lamp post: more for support than for illumination.
Some instructors rely on transparencies as an easy way to present graphs. But a transparency typically presents a finished picture. Students don't get to see how the graph is constructed or how a curve shifts in response to some change. Because students are busy copying that picture, they are distracted from your explanation of it. A new development in transparencies now offers the ability to present a complex graph in a step-by step manner through a series of attached overlays. Beginning with the simple skeleton, the graph can be built up as additional overlays are flipped over. This provides instructors with an opportunity to explain each step. Incidentally, the support package accompanying my textbook (Economics: A Contemporary Introduction, 2nd Ed., South-Western College Publishing, 1991) offers these Innovative Teaching Transparencies.