I've tried experiments like this a number of times, starting in the mid-90's (yes, these ideas have been around that long). Generally, the students do not react well, saying that they are being expected to do work when they haven't been "taught". Many students have the expectation that all of their learning will be neatly corralled into the class meeting times, and do not even bother to buy textbooks or access online course materials. I haven't given up though - I have found the sweet spot is about 50-50; in other words, half the class time is a lecture with some time for questions, and the other half is a hands on lab. I teach in an area similar to the last example discusses above.

Doing more than lecture is not new. Trying to get students to know the material before you do activities is not new. Getting the students to do work in advance of the class is the hard part.

Where is the link to part one??

To ensure that students do assigned homework, I put up short 'randomized' quizzes on our course management system that must be taken before coming to class. Since these are worth 10-15% of the course grade, most studentscome to class prepared. This allows me some freedom in lecture, which for the last 5 years I have used to ask clicker questions in my biology courses. Challenging (higher order Bloom's Taxonomy) questions are embedded in PowerPointlectures abd students are encouraged to discuss and collaborate to answer the questions. There responses are automatically saved for later analysis and (in my case) the award of 'participation' popints. End-of-semester course evaluation surveys asking questions about clicker use get overwhelming (70-80%) positive responses.

I have also been teaching a blended cell biology course for several years in which seat time is cut in half, and all lectures are pre-recorded and available as podcasts. I do not lecture in class at all. Instead, class time is used for collaborative learning activities assisted by clicker questions and 2 or more short writing exercises, all of which challenge students to use knowledge they acquired at home/online. Since summative exam scores in the blended are compararble to those in the fully face-to-face version of the same course, it seems to me that there is no harm in placing greater responsibility for learanuing on the shoulders of the students.

Because this approach has worked well in the blended course, I have been thinking about doing the same for my remaining face-to-face classes. I plan to put all my lectures online in the traditional courses and use class time to engage students in challenging activities including clickers, index card question exercises, and even trying to use some social media tools in a pedagogically sound way.

I don't see how technology can help anyone if the students are simply too under prepared for the class. What do you expect in a calculus-based physics class where half of the students cannot even do there sin and cos correctly?

Or know the difference between "their" and "there"

I'm old enough to remember watching "Sunrise Semester" classes on television over one of the New York City television stations circa the mid-1960's. These ideas are not new.

It is less that ideas such as making students responsible for their own first exposure to the course material are new, but that current technologies make it easier to implement these teaching techniques. With technology, it is easier to provide formative feedback as well as to hold students accountable for their out of class activities. Perhaps technology will make these methods easy enough to encourage more faculty to decrease their dependence on lecturing. Student acceptance of different approaches to teaching (including online courses) might be facilitated by making work expectations more explicit. Below is an example of a more explict approach (copied from the MIT catalogue).

Credit Hours and Designations for Subjects
The credit hours (units) for each subject indicate the total number of hours spent each week in class and laboratory, plus the estimated time that the average student spends each week in outside preparation, for one regular term. Each subject is listed in the online MIT Subject Listing & Schedule, http://student.mit.edu/catalog/index.cgi, with three credit numbers, showing
in sequence the units allotted to class time (lecture and/or recitation); laboratory, design, or fieldwork; and preparation.

Saying that the examples above are "nothing new" is missing the point. The difference between something like "Sunrise Semester" and what these professors are doing can be measured in both cost and responsiveness. Professors can now do audio and video support with equipment measured in hundreds of dollars as opposed to the tens of thousands of dollars that would have been required a few years ago. Additionally, with basic video editing software now coming out on mobile devices such as phones, such content can be individualized and tailored to each specific situation.

One individual can do what would have taken a grant and a department or a committee facilitate.

Anything that gets the students prepared so that actual class time can be used for discussion, questions, and improving comprehension of the material (not just memorization) is a good thing. My question though is, if the faculty develop lectures ahead of time that cover the material in an interactive way, could this replace textbooks and bring in a new way of teaching where faculty are individually responsible for the entire informational content of the course rather than relying heavily on a pre-prepared textbook that students must then purchase?

I think what's new is that faculty members used to (and still do) argue that they can't give up lecturing because students need to hear them explain the subject, and the process of developing the lecture is an expression of their unique expertise and their advanced ability to synthesize material and provide analogies and examples (i.e., a form of individual scholarship that cannot be commoditized), but now faculty can record that lecture in advance for students to review outside of class, so they can use class time for other types of "generative" learning activities. In the past, the class preparation was usually limited to reading assignments in textbooks--other people's take on a subject that students often missed the point of--and then the lecture was supposed to do a better job of introducing, pulling things together, making things relevant and providing the scholar's unique insights. Then, if students had questions or really wanted to discuss a topic to better understand it, they'd have to make an appointment to see the instructor during office hours, which few students did. Current technology makes it much easier for faculty members to provide their own introduction to a topic outside of class so that students can be more actively engaged in discussion with the instructor and peers in class, which research shows is very helpful to learning. In addition to producing lectures at one's desk, it's also easy now to create lessons (e.g., SoftChalk) that walk students through something more interactively, with embedded activities and quizzes, video simulations, etc. that may be more effective as learning tools than simply listening to someone talk and watching a bunch of bullet points go by. Tools have existed to produce learning materials for a long time, but not with the current ease of access and use, and therefore not in "scalable" forms.

My problem with the modern education technology is that it is targeting average students. The top students who spend studying way too much more time than 3 classroom hours a week actually benefit enormously from conventional lectures delivered by an expert in the field even if a textbook might have served the purpose. The top students spend enough time with the texbook anyway and a lot of time solving problems. What is there for them in the new format?

The problem I see with current wide-spread adoption of such approaches stems from the poor ISP infrastructure in the U.S. Being interrupted by frequent pauses while waiting for streaming media to "catch up" to real time is extremely detrimental to the media's goal. Until such time as high-speed Internet access is standard across the states, connectivity alone is enough to prevent wide-spread adoption of such innovation.

@the1tbone:
I agree that students need decent broadband in order to benefit from video streaming; and that the US isn't the only country that needs to have more reliable speeds to enable students to benefit (and also streamers having plenty of lower bandwidth options).
I've tried to find some upto date stats - Akami has a rather nice set of diagrams - http://www.akamai.com/stateoftheinternet/index.html#dataviz - which seem to put the US as behind Asia & ahead of Europe when it comes to average speeds;
or there's table from the same data at http://www.akamai.com/stateoftheinternet/index.html#dataviz

I'm not sure of the UK (where I'm from) average rates - though as the Govt is aiming to get everyone to have 2Mbps - guess it's less than that!

Of course, it's always going to be difficult for those in remote areas to have anything other than 3G etc, - and you have far more remote areas in the US than we do in the UK!

I have two questions about this idea for those who do it:

1) What if the students somehow mislearn the information from the videos? Can they get it corrected in class? And do you sometimes find mislearned information intractible?

2) I often find that the response to watching a video is a sort of passive reception by the students. When I show videos in class, despite telling them that we are watching actively, I can almost see the white noise turn on in some students' heads. Do these profs do anything in particular to combat that? Or perhaps it's not a problem?

What Marc has done here is great! And he's done it with relatively low costs.

It's difficult to get administration and faculty to embrace the potential of video because they mostly see it as a resource and time hog. There may be some that are hesitant to realize that video is a new (not so new) and necessary literacy for faculty, but most seem to back away because of perceived costs.

I've been banging my head against this for a few years.

So I've taken another approach. I'm developing a "Lightweight" Video Production series for our faculty. My first project is an introduction series of 3 short videos that simply introduce the Tools, the Process, and some of the Techniques. It's very brief, and meant only to whet the appetite and maybe demonstrate that effective video can be done without prohibitive costs or time.

I'm hoping this may strike a chord with some of our faculty...

REPLY TO #15,CLEVERCLOGS:
This is David Miller, the first person mentioned in Marc's article. You asked if students mislearn information from the videos, whether or not they can get it corrected in class. 90% of my material is delivered via videos, but we meet every Tuesday during what would be the usual class time slot for exactly that reason, plus discussion, plus a little additional content not contained in the videos; so, this is not a problem.

As for the possibility of passive reception & possible disengagement from watching videos, I think it all depends on how those videos are produced. My 130 students last fall reported quite the opposite. Not only were they engaged but they often got roommates (not even in my course) and even family members, some of which were professors elsewhere, interested in the material. Indeed, I know of several former roommates of students who will now be taking my course this Fall. It's easy to create a boring video. It takes work and time to avoid doing that.

David Miller:
Your success with student learning via this method reminds me of the experience of fellow faculty with blended learning in general. Counterintuitive, but it seems they take more responsibility for their learning when part of it is mediated by technology...

However, they tell me it takes a lot of time to set such a course up. And the 400 hours you spent in producing your videos is daunting. Can you tell us more about any trade off for your time budge that might offset that investment?

Thanks.
Janet

Janet,

Ha ha. No trade off. (If only...!) Really, I do it because I think it's a good thing and the right thing to do in terms of evolving this course the way I want to. (I've been at this since the mid 1990's in terms of different things I've tried, each one having its own successes, though in different ways.) Really, I enjoy it, and I'd not recommend it for someone who doesn't enjoy it. I do a lot of faculty workshops on campus (occasionally at other universities) about this sort of thing, and I try to highlight that point. I also highlight, "pedagogy precedes technology" (yeah, yeah, the acronym is coincidentally PPT; but, I'm exonerated--I used Apple Keynote). But, really, the point is that if technology will not enhance what you are currently doing, then don't do it! I use technology left and right (i.e, the videos referred to in this article, podcasts, etc.), but I know very well that's not for everyone, nor do I think it should be. And, if someone wants to get into this, they FIRST need to figure out how it will enhance pedagogy, and SECOND, be willing to put in the time to do it. Otherwise, it's probably best to simply not go there. It's worked well for me, but it may not work for everyone, nor should it. Instructors should go with what they feel works best for them and their students, and that's the bottom line.

Socrates is utterly enchanted. He wonders how he went so wrong.

@emmadw: Thanks for reminding me about akamai.com. Think I'll throw some stats in my dissertation ... ;0)

Another prof and I are preparing to develop discussions with each other for use on the online course we have jointly developed (and will alternate as teachers).

However, for f2f courses I have never offered a straight lecture. Most frequently I begin with a short open-ended video asking students what connections they make with the subject, in this case Ethics.
I also assign observations of Ethics as seen in the public media (including bumper stickers) using the same technique that I model in class.

Discussion follows amplifying the text book which has both information and segments of films, etc with discussion questions. (I am not so arrogant as to assume that a text resource cannot bring to the class resources that I do not have.) I require students to outline each chapter, a task all resist but which evaluations always show that many appreciate the process and begin to use it in other classes. I encourage them to add notes to their outline from class discussions. For those who are thorough there is no need to crack the book for the mid-term and final.

So I guess I have never done the classic lecture.

Clearly there is more than one way to learn what these courses have to offer. The educational technology applications do seem to approximate blended format classes, so in a sense they represent a convergence between online and f2f education. One issue could occur where new research findings require changes or additions to course material. I'm thinking the educational technology applications have to be designed in a way that facilitates updating as needed. Also, if you are going to spend 400 hours preparing presentations, you want to make sure that you are going to be teaching that class for a while.

Bernard Schuster
Arrive2.net