Higher Education Teaching and Learning

Instructional designers at CU Boulder researched the student experience in large lectures and used their findings to develop recommendations to improv

With some schools already announcing they will not reopen normally in the fall, and many others considering their options, educators are hoping to take advantage of the summer to improve on this spring’s sink-or-swim plunge into distance learning. Much of this reflection is likely to take place within the often siloed communities of practice in K-12 and higher education.

One source for insights on how to proceed is the cross-pollination that takes place when educators working in separate spheres learn from one another. Insights that derive from dialog between K-12, higher education, and online-learning providers could well shape instructional practices for the better as students return to school, whether in a classroom or over Zoom.

In my 2014 book “MOOCS Essentials,” I reflected on each aspect of the residential learning process and how developers of massive open online courses were trying to replicate those experiences virtually, or come up with ways to keep students engaged without direct teacher-student interaction. This was followed by a stint helping to create a new graduate school of education that required understanding the job of a K-12 teacher well enough to create a set of teachable and measurable competencies that would undergird a competency-based teacher-education program.

From these experiences, it became clear that every aspect of education could benefit from sharing of experience and expertise across educational sectors.

What’s the Use of Lectures?
For many, the recent leap to remote instruction felt rushed, chaotic and disorganized. Many things did not translate well online. Yet that discomfort also raises opportunities to question prevailing assumptions about how teaching and learning occurs. Let’s start with one of education’s most hallowed traditions: the lecture.

In his 1971 book “What’s the Use of Lectures?,” author Donald Bligh compared the four things teachers claimed students would get from lectures (acquisition of information, promotion of thought, changes in attitude, and development of behavior skills) with what his research showed pupils actually gained: only acquisition of information.