<p>This thread is motivated by something that came up in a different thread. </p>
<p>Suppose your college kid came home and said they had a science teacher who didn't really "teach", but expects you to learn stuff from the book and "spends almost no time lecturing or teaching". </p>
<p>Where would you go with this conversation?</p>
<p>What do they do in class?</p>
<p>^Different things - the teacher asks questions/leads discussions about the readings, maybe gives a reading quiz, students work problems in groups, or help the teacher do problems on the board…</p>
<p>Sounds like what happens in every class every day at my kid’s prep school. In general, I’d say that kids will learn much better in that more active environment, as long as they are prepared for class.</p>
<p>Tell them to pick better teachers next time. There are ways to find out who the good and bad teachers are. If it is a required class, and the only teacher, then there is not much you can do.</p>
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So you’re going with the idea that this is not a good teacher?</p>
<p>In my experience, what you describe can be a very effective teaching method. However, a teacher must be skilled at guiding and managing student-dominant class discussion and exercises so that the learning objectives are being met albeit not via a more traditional, one-way lecture style. Not all teachers can pull it off, and even when they can, not all students respond to this teaching method. You pose this in a way to suggest a student isn’t learning in class, only from the readings. That indicates there’s a problem, but you haven’t given enough information to pin it on the teacher or the student.</p>
<p>I don’t think I’d do much of anything. They have to learn to adapt to different teaching styles, much as they will have to learn to adapt to different styles in the workplace. It’s not for me to manage for them.</p>
<p>Depends on how effective the teacher is with that teaching style and how active the kids are in the discussions, etc. It would also depend very much on the level of the class and if it was in their major or not.</p>
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<p>Very good points.</p>
<p>I would also ask the student if there are TAs with office hours. If the student is learning primarily from the book and runs into difficulty with a particular topic, it would be helpful to have an opportunity to ask questions and discuss the material with someone knowledgeable.</p>
<p>When I was in college, several departments were experimenting with eliminating the lectures altogether for some courses and setting up a learning center with instructors on duty for many hours a week instead. There were some organized activities – labs, discussion sections, quizzes – but no lectures. Personally, I disliked it, but some students liked it very much.</p>
<p>It’s unfortunate that students rarely have a chance to choose the format of a course to match their own learning style, but on the other hand, adapting to different teaching styles and formats can be a learning experience in itself.</p>
<p>Sounds a lot like montessori classrooms. My kids attended montessori til 5th grade, and actually is a lot like how most classes are taught at my daughter’s private school (she is in 7th grade). The teacher facilitates, but the kids are expected to be motivated/excited enough to want to learn the subject. A lot is expected of the student, the material is not hand fed to them in a lecture. </p>
<p>I can’t say enough about reading reviews on rate my professor and talking to other students to find out beforehand whether a potential professor is compatible with one’s learning style.</p>
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Why are you assuming that the student can’t ask the teacher questions or that the teacher is not “someone knowledgeable”?</p>
<p>sylvan8798–in a lot of university settings the actual professor isn’t usually available to students in that capacity and the go to person is a TA. In the smaller LAC, there usually are no TA’s so the Prof would be the person to talk with. It just depends on what your experience in college was.</p>
<p>I recall that Stanford is actually piloting a class this year in which students watch the lectures on-line and do the reading outside of class, and use the class time to discuss the problem sets and issues that come up. The control group is the same class taught by the same teacher in the conventional lecture + homework way. This is part of the evolution of teaching styles as more and more classes are available ‘on-line’ and the job of the prof is being redefined as an intellectual resource. Interesting experiment and I’m looking forward to hearing about the outcome.</p>
<p>Sometimes NOT teaching is useful. I’ve had profs in grad school who spend a lot of time telling us (a) how great they were and (b) networking tips and tricks for internships, jobs, and so on. We learn the material on our own and basically chat with the uber-prof during class. Pretty good deal. But the guy was the insider’s insider…</p>
<p>Undergrad math or similar, not so desirable.</p>
<p>one of DD1’s profs is following the approach in #14. She puts the lecture slides/material and expects you to read it ahead of class, then the whole class period is devoted to discussions (heated at times). A bit more work but seems to work.</p>
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<p>The student in this instance seems to be having a negative reaction to the teacher’s style of running the class. I thought it might be better for the student to meet with someone who has not already made an unfavorable impression.</p>
<p>Also, there’s something less intimidating about TAs because they’re closer in age to undergraduates. As a student, I preferred to talk with them rather than the professor, and when I was a TA myself, students often brought me concerns that they would never have felt comfortable discussing with the professor. (For example, a student who desperately wanted to cut class on the day of her sister’s bridal shower – which was also a day when a quiz was scheduled – came to me, and we worked out a solution to the problem. She would never have brought an issue like that to the professor.)</p>
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Let’s assume the student’s response is “No mom, there aren’t any TA’s.” What other points or questions might you discuss with him/her?</p>
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The student hasn’t suggested that he is or isn’t learning in class, just that the teacher doesn’t really “teach” and doesn’t lecture the material, assigning it as reading instead.</p>
<p>The Stanford experiment has been called “flipping” by some teachers, including our high school’s AP Bio teacher, a friend, who is toying with the idea. He thinks it would be much more effective than the traditional way.</p>