links to three interesting articles on rethinking lecturing as a teaching method including a new experimental college in the USA - the University of Minnesota Rochester
Abstract
How we go about assessing HE students has such a significant impact on student learning that we need to rethink our whole curriculum design process to foreground assessment.
In this article I want to reflect on the rhetoric of 'Web 2.0' and its potential versus actual impact. I want to suggest that we need to do more than look at how social networking technologies are being used generally as an indicator of their potential impact on education, arguing instead that we need to rethink what are the fundamental characteristics of learning and then see how social networking can be harnessed to maximise these characteristics to best effect. I will further argue that the current complexity of the digital environment requires us to develop 'schema' or approaches to thinking about how we can best harness the benefits these new technologies confer.
"As firmly as the person at the podium is established in our classrooms, s/he seems even more tenaciously present in workshops and conference sessions... So what [would] you do if you didn't lecture?"
Sugata Mitra (TED talks and hole-in-the-wall computer innovator) critiques traditonal 'pencil and paper' exams and learning and gives an alternative which is (I think) a problem-based learning approach which he calls SOLE (Self-organised learning environment).
"It's all about collaborative learning, where the teacher is less of a 'sage on a stage' who knows all the answers, and more of a 'guide on the side', who encourages the students themselves to ask questions and find the answers from the incredible wealth of resources now instantly available to them on the Web."