At 02:13 PM 6/9/2006, Del Thomas Ph D wrote:
>The bottom line is that the information we now have does not suggest >that the lecture hall will foster >scientific thinking and adaptive learning. Unlike Chris I am not >opposed to testing.... > Del, you've been making unsupported claims like this for a long time. How about demonstrating a little bit of scientific thinking and providing something at least approaching empirical evidence and analysis to back up what you say? Otherwise, I'm at a loss to understand how all of those individuals who clearly know and practice scientific thinking somehow got it out of lecture halls. I would contend that a more important problem is the inability to prepare and deliver a first-rate lecture. I've been taking several of the courses many of you may have seen from an outfit called The Teaching Company to extend my own education (making up for courses I missed or slept through). These courses, prepared by professors at various universities, are on DVDs. They're lectures, pure and simple, but far superior to what most professors deliver. At points they are simply spellbinding. Am I learning? And how....in massive quantities! Could the essence of scientific thinking be learned in this way? Without question. And without any discussion, participation, give-and-take, or what have you. I've encountered a few great lecturers "in person" as well. Glen Holt, an urbanologist at Washington University, READ every word of his lectures, but they were done so well that students hung on every word (he was also know for throwing in jokes that he didn't acknowledge as such, that you would "get" when he was already four sentences further down the road). Joan Huber at U of Illinois was amazing with enormous pit sections of introductory sociology students. And there was a guy at UW Madison whose name escapes me, but was legandary for having students banging down the doors to get into his 1000-student lectures. These were rare individuals, to be sure. And stand-up comedy comes to mind as well. It certainly is a lecture of sorts. How many people can claim that with their getting-away-from-lecture techniques, they've stimulated more thinking than Lenny Bruce, or his direct descendant George Carlin. I submit, for purposes of kicking the hornet's nest as hard as I can, that most of us ought to stay away from a lot of lecturing not because of it's alleged inferiority as a pedagogical strategy, but because we suck at it. We have little idea of how to engage an audience, or we lack the personality for it. It seems to me to be very hard to do well. In that regard, it reminds me of leadership in organizations. A good many "leaders" have to rely on the huge variety of other incentives to get people to follow them, because they just aren't very good leaders. Yet, like the lead character on The Office, they continue to believe they are good leaders. I have seen as many faculty who are as deluded about their ability to teach in the traditional lecture-oriented manner. Well, that ought to be enough to get things buzzing... Dr. Gerry Grzyb, Chair Department of Sociology University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Oshkosh, WI 54901 Office: Swart 317A 920-424-2040 (Personal office) 920-424-2030 (Sociology office) 920-424-1418 (Sociology fax) e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Teaching Sociology" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/teachsoc -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
