I saw many college students who don’t know why they are studying and just follow what other people do. And the aimless college students often grow up as a young professionals who feel lost. My husband used to be a student and a professional like that, but after few years traveling over the world, he finally found what he really wanted and abandoned his degree and profession. Now, he is a freshman again studying culinary art, I am proud of him ?

I completely agree with you. Learning depends on individuals intention mostly. The proper utilization of available resources helps ensure proper learning.

Thank you for your thoughtful post, Jason. The effectiveness of lectures has been an issue I’ve thought about regularly as a graduate student and as an Educator. I never rose ‘high’ enough (in grade level teaching) to deliver what would be considered a ‘lecture’, but even as an elementary teacher, I realized that the ‘sage on the stage’ role was not for me: mostly because I don’t have much of an ego to feed, but also because I never considered it an effective method of imparting wisdom/knowledge as a student.

I also read Robert Talbert’s article: Four Things Lecture is Good For reluctantly, because I, like so many of us, do not feel that lecture is an effective pedagogy most of the time. But I was much more optimistic about the power of lecture after I read it. I agree with Talbert’s assessment that if a lecture is intentionally prepared and delivered for one of the four purposes he states, it could very well be a positive learning method. But I don’t recall any lectures I have attended in a university setting that were intentionally delivered, or framed as being for one of the purposes enumerated by Talbert (modeling thought processes, sharing cognitive structures, providing context, telling stories). I have listened to plenty of TED Talks, attended book introductions, attended presentations of research and study findings, heard people tell stories about their life and experiences and never considered them to be lectures. But I never thought about why I hadn’t considered them so.

This reply got a little long after this point, so I made it into a blog post instead. Here’s a link: https://blogs.lt.vt.edu/kgculbertson/tomorrow-is-here-now/

The idea that a good instructor should not teach facts, but teach their students how to learn was one of, if not the most revelatory experiences in my undergraduate education. We should be giving students the tools to go out and be able to teach themselves anything that piques their interest. The internet has facilitated this end; any amateur can be an expert with enough concerted effort and a strong enough WiFi.

Congratulation! you are so brave to face the challenge. I experienced the similar situation at the first semester at Tech. During the first meeting with the director of our major, he noticed that the coding course is one of the compulsory course in creative technology major. When I hear that I almost cry. I told him ” you would ask a fine art student work in coding section”. But, with his encouragement, I add in that class. Finally, I understand it is a new language to present the ideas and concepts. I think it is the true life, we are growing without expectation.

Thanks for your detailed reply Dr. Murzi.

This is far outside of my experience, so perhaps this is a foolish observation: but if PBL is truly so powerful, perhaps the traditional apprenticeship system was better than the modern university system!?! If PBL is so powerful, perhaps in 50 years, supervised projects and internships could replace traditional lectures entirely. But doesn’t the lack of standardization become a problem? The students who did the ARUP senior capstone will surely have had a different experience than the students who followed them the year after. If the majority of their education is problem based, how can you be certain that the mechanical engineers graduating from UQ have the same general skills as the mechanical engineers from VT? For that matter, how can you be sure the 2017 UQ class has the same skills as the 2018 UQ class. Without courses dedicated to a highly specific subject (say Fluid Mechanics), how can you be certain that all the graduates will have encountered it before graduating? Perhaps the this year’s mixture of projects is heavily biased towards solid mechanics and thermodynamics, includes almost no fluid mechanics, and the graduates miss it entirely. For that matter, how do you teach something like differential equations in a PBL setting?

As I said, I am certainly not part of the education field, but it seems like doing away with the traditional lecture will be difficult – that said, I of course defer to experience of the field’s experts like yourself.

Thanks for the sharing channel. The website I always visit is http://www.lynda.com, which is free to access the web and watch a lot of tutorial video. It is a great web for the self-teaching. Typing the name of the program you want to learn then there are series of playlist show. You would choose the learning level and find the comfortable the video to follow.

I think that you bring up some really good points in this post. I agree with your point about passion for learning. In general, I think that having an active passion for learning is the most important quality for being able to educate and inspire others. This often manifests itself through educators using technology in their continual attempt to improve their teaching, but at the root of the issue I think that it is the passion for education that is the foundation. I also think that having a good understanding of the audience and context are crucial to being able to transfer knowledge and engage people.

Sneha – Even I, someone that advocates for technology in the classroom, still become hesitant about educational changes sometimes. For instance, today while TA-ing a class, the professor brought in cookies while speaking about reduced fat versus original food products. I tried to pass the box of COOKIES to the student behind me and she didn’t even look up to grab them. Instead, her friend beside her noticed what had just happened and took them from me. “What are we supposed to do with the cookies?” she asked her friend. It took everything in me not to say something. This student was sitting in the second row of the classroom and yet was so immersed in her texting conversation that she had no clue what was going on, even when it involved cookies. Did I mention we had cookies today!? : ) While I recognize that there are many positive facets of the usage of technology in the classroom, I do believe there are times when it is utterly distracting. In my opinion, cellphones are such a distraction to students. We had about three go off in our 55-minute class today. But what about that one student that used his/her phone to look up something related to the class? to answer a Top Hat question? to check a grade? I am hesitant to some changes because I don’t think there is always a black or white answer. When I was in undergrad, cellphone were absolutely not allowed in class. It can be difficult to accept that things are just different now!

Cool, I had never heard of the Barnstars.
Some other performance metrics rose, but anecdotally their colleagues considered them less prepared in residency. Dr. Nelson said she will discuss this specifically in some future class, I guess we’ll see if there is any better research on the issue!