LOGGING IN WITH . . .
Richard H. Hall
Scholar Says 'Learning by Doing' Is the Key to Quality Instruction
By DAN CARNEVALE
Richard H. Hall, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Missouri at Rolla, has taught both online and face to face, and he finds that neither approach is inherently better than the other. He has also noticed that many professors don't take advantage of new teaching methods: Face-to-face classes usually don't consist of much more than lectures, and online courses aren't much more than lecture notes on a Web site. As a research associate in the university's instructional-software-development center, Mr. Hall is finding that technology can significantly improve teaching, whether online or in person.
Q. In terms of learning, what are the differences between online and face-to-face courses?
A. On an empirical level, we really don't have much evidence that there's a big difference. But I'm sure that part of that is just because we don't have really good measures of the kinds of things you get from a face-to-face class. I think one of the reasons we find that is because in a lot of face-to-face instruction, frankly, we don't use very advanced methods, and we rely on just the traditional direct-instruction lecture method.
I think educational researchers have said for a long time that that's not a very effective way to learn. Most of us know intuitively that we don't usually learn very well from somebody talking to us. We usually have to do something. ... Face-to-face instruction, lots of times, is just a matter of delivering information that a computer could do just as well as a human.
Q. What is the most effective way to teach?
A. The first thing would be to take advantage of the adaptive nature of computerized instruction. You can keep track of the learners by giving pretests and that sort of thing to find out about the learners' abilities, and then provide them with instruction based on their abilities. And you can do that a lot more quickly and efficiently [with computerized instruction] than I can with only a class of 50 students [in a lecture hall].
The second thing is, you can take advantage of the simulation abilities of a computer, especially in science and technology classes, so that you can provide multimedia that has dynamic things in it, like showing movement and three-dimensional objects.
Third, there are also some really neat things you can do with collaboration in terms of discussion groups. You can have more control over discussion groups. You can keep track of exactly who has discussed. The learners are more anonymous, so introverts tend to participate more.
Q. So what is the ideal course?
A. Richard Hall's version of the ideal course is, first of all, you have learning by doing. So you have the students doing something active. To me, that's the most fundamental characteristic of a good course. But that's a lot easier said than done when you get a bunch of students used to the traditional lecture, and they sit back passively. So the first thing about an ideal course is that you have something arranged so the learners are active.
Q. How do you get professors to drop the lecture-based course and have students interact with the professor and with technology?
A. That's the million-dollar question. All of us interested in technology have been struggling with that for a long time. The first answer -- and I don't know how this will ever change -- is that you have to reward them more for development of technology. This has been true with teaching all along at the university level. Any university will tell you this: We get rewarded mostly for our research, and especially for our funded research. We don't get rewarded very much for effective teaching at big universities. And when you try to develop things with technology, unfortunately that can be really time-intensive. ... So the simple answer is to set up some sort of reward system where teachers get rewarded more for teaching in general, and for developing useful technology tools specifically.
The second thing would be for those of us who are involved in developing technology to really make an effort to consider professor efficiency while we're developing things. Some people are doing this. Some companies, like WebCT and Blackboard, are developing Web-based tools that make it simpler for the instructor to put material on the Web.
Q. What about those who refuse to use technology?
A. A lot of us, and I've been guilty of this, too, are overly critical of those kinds of instructors, and I don't think that's going to do any good. ... When we do that, I think it makes them really defensive. We have to be less forceful and pretentious about our use of technology. If they're teaching it effectively -- and there certainly are instructors who are teaching effectively without using technology -- and doing active things in the class, then the first thing would be to not do anything about it. ... Technology is a tool to make the class better. It's not an end.
