PowerPoint is boring. Student attention spans are short. Today many facts pop up with a simple Google search. And plenty of free lectures by the world's greatest professors can be found on YouTube.
Is it time for more widespread reform of college teaching?
Today, professors are letting students pass virtual notes in class on Twitter. They're trying "clickers" that turn classrooms into game shows. They're videotaping their classes to let students watch lecture reruns to help cram for the test, or share the knowledge with the world on YouTube. They're monitoring how many minutes students spend reading online textbooks to see who needs help.
The Chronicle is putting together a multimedia feature exploring the state of the college lecture, and how technologies point to new models. While some enthusiasts see the high-tech changes as a much-needed upgrade to an education model that is more than a thousand years old, others see dangers ahead. Is all that gear a distraction? Is academic freedom threatened when Web tools and video make public the once-sacred space of the classroom?
If you're a current college student, fire up your laptop’s Web cam, or your smartphone's video camera, and let us know whether your professor's lectures are boring, inspiring, or something in between. Would you rather something more interactive happen in class, or should lectures stick around for the long haul? Please don’t name your professors, and you don't have to give your name if you prefer not to.
One view often left out of the current debates about teaching is that of the student, so your input can help shape the conversation among college leaders.
We’ll feature the best videos on our Web site, and I’ll show some of the clips at a talk I'm giving at this year’s SXSW interactive festival in Austin, Texas. Just post your video to YouTube or other video-sharing site and headline it LectureFail?, or send the clip directly to jeff.young@chronicle.com.
We'll be taking submissions until the end of February.
