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Keith Barton wrote: >If college professors showed a wide range of methods of instruction, with some using primary sources, some using exciting lectures, some using videos, some using the internet, and so on, then it would make sense to say that students should adapt to the particular class they have and try to learn from it, knowing that the next course is likely to employ different methods. Everyone's needs would be met at some point. Actually, I think this misses the point a bit Keith, although I know where you are going with it. There is excellent research showing that presentation of the content is not the factor, but rather the amount of engagement of the students. "Exciting lectures" may entertain, but they don't create historians or show what historians really do. Videos are like books, and are best used outside of class. In class, I think that historians should be coaches to their students, and help them become better historians themselves: ie. read in a critical manner, assess evidence, construct arguments, evaluate the best interpretations of the data, and then figure out how it applies in their own lives. There is a lot of evidence that there are a series of best practices that will work in the classroom. So why don't teachers do it? Tim Bothell at Brigham Young University did a very informative study on time management and faculty a couple of years back, and essentially discovered that faculty know what the best practices are, and how students learn best, but they don't use those techniques in their own classrooms. My explanation for this is that lecturing is what we know; it's what OUR instructors did. And until one has seen someone successfully teach in a different way, it is hard to believe it can be done, and therefore no-one will take a chance on it in their classroom. I think the new paradigm of history teaching is taking hold (we just held the ISSOTL conference here at IU and had some great presentations by David Pace, Mills Kelly, Bob Bain, and others). The key seems to be to make it clear that teaching for student learning actually has a lot of benefits to it, namely: - faculty enjoyment in the classroom - ability to teach long classes without being drained - having students that do better and more challenging work - ability to provide student learning outcomes for accreditation The main difficulty is that it takes a year or two to learn how to do this stuff, which means new preparation for one's classes as well. It seems training the NEXT generation to do this kind of history is likely to be a more successful means of effecting change, than to convince the current generation to rewrite their courses to support student learning (however desirable that might be). Take care, Dakin Burdick, Ph.D. Instructional Consultant Campus Instructional Consulting Indiana University Franklin Hall 004 Bloomington, IN 47405 phone: (812) 855-6869 fax: (812) 855-8404 http://www.iub.edu/~teaching ____________________ The H-TEACH Homepage may be found at <http://www.h-net.org/~teach/>, where subscribers can directly manage their accounts, view past postings, and consult a variety of teaching resources.
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