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July 20, 2009, 04:07 PM ET
Can Removing Computers From Classrooms Improve Teaching?
This week’s College 2.0 column explores a proposal by a dean at Southern Methodist University who is taking computers out of classrooms in an effort to improve teaching.
The dean, José A. Bowen, wants to discourage professors from using PowerPoint because they often lean on the slide-display program as a crutch rather than using it as a creative tool. Class time should be reserved for discussion, he contends, especially now that students can download lectures online and find libraries of information on the Web. When students reflect on their college years later in life, they’re going to remember challenging debates and talks with their professors. Lively interactions are what teaching is all about, he says, but those give-and-takes are discouraged by preset collections of slides. (Check out the article for his proposal.)
Are computers being used in a way that is discouraging interaction in classrooms? What is the appropriate use of technology in teaching?
Comments
1. huk730 - July 25, 2009 at 08:05 am
Removing boring professors would make better pedagogy than Luddite computer removal.
2. pjrichardson - December 02, 2009 at 10:16 am
Knee-jerk reactions are sometimes our own worst enemy, causing us to miss out on something that would not only make us happy, but more successful toward achieving our own goals. I totally agree with the policy of making PowerPoints a tool, rather than a primary crutch to replace intelligent discussion. There are equal problems with discussions though, such as the tendency for them to wander aimlessly into the land of ego-stroking anecdote or worse. The real problem is not so simple as removing computers altogether, which is analogous to a ban on all medications as a solution to over-prescribed and abused niches of pharmacology.
On the other hand (and this is so sad) there are fewer and fewer true scholars and erudite faculty available to students as colleges focus more and more on commercial growth and market expansion. Removing computers completely from classrooms would be a quick way to further lower academic standards for quality pedagogy, but it would also make your school look like a Flinstone's commercial thereby putting off more intelligent potential faculty and students, who likely don't see such issues as black-and-white, but rather a lack of support and training for faculty in the area of instructional technology as mere tools of instructional design.
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