Here is a brief report on a somewhat less brief meta-study that claims to show lectures are less effective than active learning approaches in STEM subjects. The report makes a claim that this is an important study. Well, kind of – it will no doubt be cited a lot. This is one of those studies that most educational researchers, including me, would very much like to be correct. Most of our theories and models suggest that lecturing is a truly dumb way to teach. Unfortunately, however, this study does not really show that. We know, and this study confirms in its data, that some lectures work really well some of the time for some students. We also know that active learning approaches do not always work better and sometimes work worse. The study makes the claim that, on average, more active trumps more passive (there are very few blacks and whites in this, it is all on a spectrum, which the study does not very effectively cater for). Sadly, however, it uses a skewed sample because (as this perceptive article highlights very nicely) active approaches typically rely on great, passionate teachers who know how to educate in order to implement them well. And guess who gets to write studies comparing active learning and lecture approaches. Even comparative studies, such as the sort that typically compare a previous run of a course with a newly minted active version, are bound to show this bias. Compare what it is like to teach a course that feels stale with one that is not only new, based on ideas you believe in (which the study, to its credit, attempts to control for) but also (as active learning approaches do) allows your own skill as a teacher to shine. This is systemically biased data.

A message I have been trying to hammer home for some time is that it ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it, that’s what gets results. The softer, more malleable, more student-led a course becomes, the more that is required of the skill and passion of the teacher to be responsive and helpful, which means that such courses can be truly awesome or terrifically awful, depending on the people involved. Published research tends to come from those who are more skillful and interested in teaching because those that are not do not normally publish papers about it, so the results available to meta-studies are inevitably skewed.

Lectures are hard, rigid teaching technologies that, together with technologies like textbooks, exams, designed outcomes and timetables, are built to cater for mediocrity in teachers. Great teachers can surpass the limitations an educational system imposes, but some learning happens as a result of process design even when the teacher is truly dire. A dire teacher in an active learning context will leave students confused, lacking direction and demotivated even more than one who just lectures badly.  Furthermore, lectures can have genuine value. I have no great objections in principle to occasional lectures as long as they take up no more than a few minutes of a learner’s day, and as long as lecturers start with the assumption that no direct learning will result from them. Lectures can be good catalysts, a reason to get together, and can help structure studies and thinking, even if they are almost useless for directly learning facts or skills. Just occasionally, not enough to justify their use, they can even inspire and motivate. It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it.

Address of the bookmark: http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=131403&org=NSF&from=news

Thanks to Larbi for this one –

In the US, it seems that a steadily rising number of people believe in the quality of online education. This is despite the fact that, in the US, online education is all too often equated with somewhat tarnished institutions like Phoenix and a range of smaller shady or worse private providers (apparently I can get another doctorate in the US for a mere $25, according to spam I have received) that have not done wonders for the cause. It would be interesting to know what the results might be in countries that have a more visible tradition of high quality distance education provision, like Canada, the UK, India, Turkey, the Netherlands, etc.

In my (very direct) experience, students with distance taught qualifications are, on average, more self-starting, highly motivated and skilled when compared with students taught more conventionally. I’d definitely be one of the employers who would favour an online qualification over a traditionally taught one, all things being equal. But, as for any qualification, I’d look very closely at which institution it came from.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.gallup.com/poll/168416/americans-trust-online-higher-education-rising.aspx

Interesting commentary on privacy concerns using ProctorU, a third-party monitoring service for online exam taking. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand it is indeed highly invasive and suggests some notable privacy concerns, but is not too far removed from what we already do for face-to-face exams. The biggest problem for me is the notion that an exam itself is a solution to the accreditation problem, not that there is yet another sophisticated and somewhat dubious weapon in an unwinnable arms race. In all its summative guises, the exam is a technology that is well past its sell-by date. We need better, more authentic, less-invasive, less expensive, less easily corruptable methods of accreditation. 

Address of the bookmark: http://spartandaily.com/119401/online-proctoring-raises-privacy-concerns

From Joe Bower, a good, straightforward summary of most of the reasons not to grade learners, and some sensible suggestions about how to largely avoid using grades etc within a system that requires them. Though situated in a face-to-face school context, this very closely matches my own views on the subject and the methods I use to get around a system that is built on grading.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.joebower.org/2014/03/heres-my-chapter-from-book-de-testing.html

Steve Wheeler (a fine contributor to the world of online learning himself with a blog worth subscribing to and a very active Twitter presence with a Twitter handle that beats most) interviews our own Terry Anderson about distance learning and Terry’s views on related topics.

Disclaimer: this includes good plugs for both the Landing and books that I have contributed to and that I have cowritten with Terry, plus Terry is a good friend of mine. But he is also, as Steve says, “one of the famous figures of contemporary education, and his list of achievements is lengthy.” It’s worth reminding ourselves from time to time that we have a very good percentage of the most significant thinkers and researchers in distance and online education in the World here at Athabasca University, of which Terry is one of the great leading lights.

Address of the bookmark: http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.ca/2014/03/interview-with-terry-anderson.html?utm_content=buffer457d6&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

From Dave Noon, what Boing Boing describes as a ‘Lovecraftian rant’ about how much the author hates Blackboard. Brilliant.

If you don’t know Blackboard, it is a learning management system from the Blackboard corporation. The company produces very weak products for the educational market but has captured quite a lot of the territory using a business model built on deliberate lock-in (it was able to gain a foothold early on and keeps its position by making it very hard to migrate to a different platform) combined with an ‘acquire and eliminate’ approach to superior but less-entrenched competitors and, where that fails, aggressive patent trolling.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/01/christ-i-hate-blackboard