TITLE: Rehabilitating the Reputation of Lecture
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: December 14, 2010  4:25 PM
DESC: 
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Last week, I followed a links from John Cook to the
essay
<A HREF="http://politicsofthecrossresurrected.blogspot.com/2010/12/in-praise-of-lecture.html">
   In Praise of the Lecture</A>.
This is countercultural among academics these days.
As you probably know, lecture is out of fashion.
My colleagues in the sciences still rely on them
pretty heavily, some proudly and defiantly, but
even many scientists speak as lectures are a bad
thing.  They are dead, boring.  Because they don't
involve the student, they don't engage the student's
mind.  As a result, learning doesn't happen.

I have some courses in which I lecture almost not at
all.  In most others, I mix lecture and exercises to
create a semi-active classroom.  Right now,, though,
I am coming out of my
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2010-12.html#e2010-12-07T16_24_36.htm">
   compilers course</A>,
in which I lecture a lot.  Looking back, I know that
on many days I need to generate more excitement for
my students.  Yet the simple fact is that this course
material seems to require more lecture than exercise
on most days.  Whatever compilers textbook I use, I
feel as if I need to explain ideas and techniques for
a second time in hopes of making them clear.

The thing is, lecture doesn't have to be boring.  The
class periods I recall from my undergrad days were all
lectures, and I recall them fondly, with admiration
for the speaker and deep appreciation for the subject.
The best lecturers roused emotion in their audience
and exhorted us to action.  A great lecture has a
different rhythm from other class sessions.  "In
Praise of the Lecture" reminds me that this is true.

I especially enjoyed Carter's section titled "The
Lecture as a Personal Act".  Here is a snippet:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
Closely related to the idea of the lecture as a moral
act is the idea of the lecture as a personal act.
True education is always about personal growth toward
the Truth.  Some would charge the lecture with being
the paradigmatic act of arrogance: one person stands
there with all the truth while the rest sit quietly
as supplicants.  But this is to distill the university
experience into only one of its moments, as if the
slow movement of the pendulum to the right were never
balanced by its eventual arc back to the left.  To
read in preparation and to argue in response are the
parts of the educational experience set in motion by
the lecture, which acts a fulcrum.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

In order for a lecture to work, students <EM>must</EM>
be engaged: not in some active exercise within the
class period, but across a broader swath of time.
First, they must read in order to ready their minds.
Then comes the lecture, which tells a second story.
It is a living incarnation of what the author
describes.  Students see what the professor focuses
on, what the professor chooses to leave in, what the
professor omits, and what excites the professor.  They
are introduced to questions that lie at the edges of
the ideas and techniques and lines of code.  The best
lecturers do this in context, so that students hear
a story personalized to that time, place, and audience.

Finally, students must engage the ideas afterwards.
In the humanities, this might take the form of
discussion in which everyone in the room, lecturer
included, argue their cases -- and maybe even someone
else's case -- in order to really understand.  That
can happen in the sciences, too, but just as important
for the science student is application: taking ideas
into the lab to try them out, see when they work and
when they don't, bend them to fit the peculiarities
of a real problem.  Only then are they and the
professor ready to have a truly enlightening discussion.

The biggest problem with lecture may be that it
expects so much of the students who hear it.  They
<EM>must</EM> read and think before class.  They must
apply ideas and think after.  Building courses around
in-class exercises may well lead students to think
that all the learning will happen in class and
discourage the kinds of learning that happen outside
of class.  I realize that this likely overstates the
case, and romanticizes the lecture, but I still think
there is some truth in it.

Lecture also expects more of the teacher.  It's easy
to give boring lectures by reading old notes or
cribbing from the mind-numbing slide deck that seems
to come as a matter of course with every textbook
these days.  To lecture well, the teacher must engage
the material, too, and personalize it, both to herself
and to her students.  That's what Carter means when he
says that a lecture occurs in a specific place and
time.  Whether we admit it or not, a lecture is a
personal act, whether done well or not.  It is and
should be unique.  Perhaps this is why I feel I have
to rework every lecture every time I deliver it.

Actually, I <EM>want</EM> to.  That's how I engage
the material and make it say what Eugene Today feels
and thinks.  Even with a course on compiler construction,
I change from offering to offering, and how I present
the material must change.  Besides, every lecture I
give can be better.  I need to work toward that goal
a little every time I give them.

I'm not suggesting that every course be taught in
a lecture format, or even every session of any course.
I will continue to use in-class exercises, discussion,
and any other technique I can to make my courses as
effective as I can.  I'm just saying that lecture
has a place, and just maybe it can help us to create
the right expectations for our learning environments.

In the end, whether we lecture or discuss, whether
we use group exercises or clicker systems and multiple
choice questions, it all probably comes down to this:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
"My students do not learn what I teach them.  They
learn what I am excited about."
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Please forgive me if this comes off sounding a bit
too romantic for a computer science professor.  The
semester is coming to a close, and we are in the
Christmas season.
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