A lecturer at a West Yorkshire university has abolished traditional lectures in favour of podcasts.
Dr Bill Ashraf, a senior lecturer in microbiology at Bradford University, says the move will free up time for more small group teaching. [from BBC news]
Students can then ask questions via email or text message, and the professor will respond on his blog. [from techdirt]
Distance education has been doing this for a long time, this is just another form of delivery.
Question:
Is this better than lecture in a hall with 1000 students inside? yes.
Will this increase "learning"? no.
Is this increase interaction between teacher and students? no.
The benefactor of this:
Students: do not have to travel and sit in the lecture hall, but lost the opportunity to going out with friends after the lecture.
Teacher: do it once. Next year, same podcast. Save time.
1 comment:
Hi Karyn,
Yes, such "news" is not news-worthy. Most of the time, I was actually quite angry when I saw this kind of information appearing in the media. The reporter(s), in most cases, missed the point!
New practices in teaching/learning are news worthy ONLY if these new practices can lead to real improvement in learning! Unfortunately, I do not recall I have seen any such news-worthy news.
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