MIT Moves Away From Massive Lecture Halls 317
eldavojohn writes "The New York Times is reporting on MIT's migration away from large lectures as many colleges and universities have. Attendance at these lectures often falls to 50 percent by the end of the semester. TEAL (Technology Enhanced Active Learning) gives the students a more hands on approach and may signal the death of the massive lecture hall synonymous with achieving a bachelors of science."
I don't get the "50% reduction in failures" (Score:4, Interesting)
Why is a 50% reduction in failures a useful stat? The schools want a certain amount of failures in these large "weeder" classes, because giving a diploma to everyone who pays waters down the value of the diploma.
If they wanted to reduce failures, they only needed to move the curve (which was set where it was on purpose in the first place).
Honestly, by the time you get to college, especially ones like MIT, if you can't learn because the environment isn't as cozy as it could be, I'm not sure it is completely the school's job to fix that for you. You might expect that in primary school, but you can't expect it in the world of work, so seems like college is a great place to start introducing people to the concept.
I would have to imagine another flip side of this is the students "don't get access" (whatever that really means in a big lecture) to top professors. Teaching 80 kids at once instead of 500 means you have to run 6x as many classes and professors aren't going to do this willingly. You're probably going to end up with only access to a T.A. (teaching assistant).
Re:The best educations often don't come fro the bi (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes and no. If you're looking for a lot of individual time and supervision, no, a big school is not the place to go.
But if you're looking for great resources and opportunities, then a big school is far superiour. I jumped into a graduate research lab my junior year for credit, experience, and references that were a huge benefit to me, and that sort of opportunity was impossible for me at the smaller school where I'd spent my first two years.
The gotcha is that you have to go looking for those opportunities. No one is going to try and force you to take them.
Re:Good. (Score:3, Interesting)
I /went/ through the goddamn 8.01 TEAL pilot, then 8.02 TEAL. It was like chewing on glass. You spend easily 20-30% of the class time fiddling with the stupid response system, and less time getting through the material.
If you look carefully at the picture in TFA, you can see the vitality pouring out of these poor students. They're just awake enough to fiddle with their remote when prompted. Nobody's listening.
It's the professor who makes or breaks the lecture format. Frankly, I would have been sorely deprived if 6.115 had had a different format. The material was dense, but the prof knew how to draw in an audience.
Measuring failure rate in a curved class against an uncurved one where up to 15% of your grade is coming from brain-dead attendance (you can literally be half asleep) doesn't prove that TEAL is effective.
Slightly off topic, perhaps... (Score:4, Interesting)
His college requires all freshman to take three credits of social/cultural liberals arts classes focused on diversity, understanding, and rainbows. On the plus side, they focus on writing weekly research papers, which is probably a good habit for freshman to pick up.
In this specific class, the teacher was warning against the perfidious institution of sexism in places of power, and gave the evil ex-dean of harvard as an example. I happen to have had conversations about that with my son, and so when the teacher asked for open discussion, my son spoke up. He said that as he understood it, the Harvard dean was a poor example of sexism, since all he stated was that there was possibly may be some physical difference in brain development between the genders that lead to the male preponderance in hard sciences.
The teacher turned red, started to stammer, so my son stopped talking. By the end of the day, he had been notified that he had been removed from the class. Now, he's probably learned a good lesson... shut up and don't engage in free discussion in a class that encourages free discussion, until he gets a feel for the teacher's maturity. It's an unfortunate lesson, but probably necessary. I should stress that he is always polite, and always soft-spoken; there would have been nothing objectionable about his behavior.
To bring this back to topic, perhaps losing face-to-face contact and easy interactivity with the professor and other students is not really much of a loss. Except for the best teachers, most classes are no more educational than spending an hour with a textbook, and sometimes (when personalities get involved) much worse.
MIT was concerned about cost (Score:3, Interesting)
The NY Times article pretty much lists the advantages. Foremost is an improving the pass rate from 85% to 95%. Second is students learn and retain the material better. Freshmen courses are the basis of subsequent coursework. Third is more efficient grading. Students and professors are being given automatic feedback. You dont need as many problems sets and exams. (A disaster for the MIT tradition of showering freshmen on the night before the first physics midterm
There are hybrid solutions to make lectures more interactive. Something as simple as clickers, like they use in TV game shows, to give the prof immediate feedback and keep students focused on lectures. And this costs on $50 per student.
Re:I don't get the "50% reduction in failures" (Score:5, Interesting)
I went to MIT, and it sounds like your "living group" was too busy "drinking." No such stats in my class.
Re:great (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know. I was in several classes that size when I was in school (both my Physics classes and 1 Astronomy class). Admittedly, the guy doing the Astronomy class was a joke. It consisted of a slide show for a lecture and the "textbook" was his own book he'd written which came from the bookstore as a collection of pages that you had to add to your own 3 ring binder. Given that I already knew most of what was in the class (having taken more advanced classes on the subject already - this was just an easy elective), after the first 2-3 weeks I stopped going and just checked the website and showed up for tests. Ended up making an A+ in the class.
Now, the two Physics classes of this size were MUCH better handled. The professor didn't use powerpoint at all. OCCASIONALLY he'd use the overhead projector, but not for more than 1 slide. Mostly he used the chalkboard (which had a system of pullies to raise/lower 2 sets of 3 boards as needed so there was plenty of writing space available to him) to work out problems, but he also did a lot of straight lecturing, and hands on demonstrations where he'd bring in equipment, call volunteers onto the stage, etc. If you felt like shouting (or sitting close to the front) he was also more than happy to answer any questions the class might have. He was also a very funny/fun professor (as well as a complete jackass, but in an entertaining sort of way). I honestly found those two classes to be some of my most enjoyable I took, and never felt disadvantaged due to the class size.
In general, I think that it's more difficult to teach effectively to a very large class, but it's by no means impossible.
Re:Good. (Score:2, Interesting)
Used properly, these things can actually be fairly useful, as they allow a lecturer to get immediate feedback as to whether students have grasped the material being covered in the lecture. They also tell students whether they've grasped the material as well, and also tends to get students to engage more with the material.
Here at UCR, we sell them, and you register them, though only certain classes (usually ones with > 30 students) use them.
Re:Capable of Getting In To MIT = Capable Of Passi (Score:3, Interesting)
50%? For Engineering, that seems high. At the University of Pittsburgh, I remember being told that every year, the number of students drops by half. 200 Freshman = 100 Sophomores = 50 Juniors = 25 Seniors. People dropped out of Engineering (and flocked to Business/History/English/Econ/Imaginary Engineering) like flies at my school, and it definitely showed as you got to the higher classes.
Re:remote learning (Score:4, Interesting)
Is this going towards a future where students do not need to be physical present on the campus?
Actually, the TEAL approach that replaced the large freshman physics lectures at MIT places a heavier emphasis on attendance. In a traditional lecture the professor doesn't know most of the students, and doesn't really care if 50% of them stop showing up after the first week. With TEAL there are interactive portions of the class (such as answering multiple choice questions with a personal remote) which are tracked and factored into the student's grade. In other words, if you don't show up, you can't get an A (no matter how well you have mastered the material).
Personally I don't think this is the best approach, but it certainly isn't forgiving of a student's absence from class.
As a side note, when I was a freshman, many of my classmates did not find the TEAL lectures to be terribly effective in teaching the material. Frequently they would go back into the video archive after class and watch recordings of the "traditional" lectures from years past to actually learn what was being taught. They just went to the TEAL lectures because they didn't want to loose their participation credit.
Re:remote learning (Score:1, Interesting)
Ah college. The most expensive library I've ever attended. Where the books are written by the professors and the professors lecture out of their books... or they have their secretary teach you instead, and call them a TA.
Not surprisingly, some of the TA's where far better educators than the professors they worked for.
Re:Slightly off topic, perhaps... (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. In particular, note this part:
In other words, the wise conservative student outwits the mush-brained liberal professor and humiliates him in front of everyone, just by stating the facts! In reality, of course, the professor would just steamroller over any argument or fact thrown at him, and keep right on going. Anyone who has met the type knows exactly what I mean.
This sounds like something right out of Snopes. I'll bet I could find a variant of this exact story if I looked hard enough.
Re:remote learning (Score:2, Interesting)
I stopped going to my physics lectures about week 2, when I realized the professor was just reading off of slides copied straight from the book. I'd go turn in homework, and go to the tests... but otherwise I'd just skip class and go get lunch, since my day was otherwise booked solid (labs and class) from 0800 to 1900.
The next semester they introduced PRS (personal response systems). The fail rate didn't change.
Re:remote learning (Score:3, Interesting)
But you can do that already. MIT has been going through the process of putting their courses online (see OpenCourseWare).
So, at this point, what does it mean that you went to MIT? That they graded your papers? That their professor read you the course notes? No, anybody could do that.
The only advantages to going to a school like MIT versus a generic school are 1) getting the name on your diploma and 2) experiencing the supposedly mind expanding ambiance there. IMHO the best thing about MIT is #1 above, and the hardest part about that (above and beyond other schools) is getting into it in the first place. #2 is pretty good, but not noticably better than, say, VaTech. There are brilliant people, the facilities are good, but the teaching itself isn't spectacular and quite uneven.
(And, yes, I went to MIT. Course 16-2; took Unified with Shiela Widnall; walked across the damn bridge every day from the fraternity, all 364.4 smoots and one ear; took 18.03 from a professor from Ukraine who learned English in Scotland, could not understand a word the man said).
Re:Slightly off topic, perhaps... (Score:2, Interesting)
I would suggest a more likely scenario is that the event went down in exactly the opposite way. Your son started an argument he couldn't win, his fellow classmates shouted him down, and he dropped the class in shame.
Re:remote learning (Score:2, Interesting)
I think some professors might take issue with the statement that they don't care if 50% of students stop showing up. The article quotes professors who were upset at that very fact.
I agree with most of what you said, though. I had experimental lab-based calculus classes in my first year of college, and it really wasn't good. I definitely showed up for all of the labs, but I got much less out of them. When I get a set of instructions, I execute them as quickly and efficiently as possible. The labs didn't require enough thinking to really teach me very much.
-t.
Re:Souds boring (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:remote learning (Score:1, Interesting)
Incidentially, thats me in the third row.
Re:Synonymous? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you are trying to decide whether to go to a big name school or Podunk State University, please don't listen to the anecdotal evidence of parent poster. Whether you are trying to make it in industry or academia, the reputation or your school will significantly factor into your success. The same goes for the reputation of the companies you choose to work for.
Re:remote learning (Score:4, Interesting)
MIT's Open Courseware is lacking in the fact that (a) the classes don't count for credit, (b) nobody's there to grade any work you do, and (c) many classes are not posted in the entirety (video lectures are IFAIK non-existent, answer sheets to the assigned HW questions are never there, and entire slideshow lectures are occasionally missing).
Re:I don't get the "50% reduction in failures" (Score:3, Interesting)
I also went to MIT, and in my section of my living group we had 10 freshmen my year (4th hnc of sr haus, in case you were wondering). 1 graduated early, 2 graduated on time, and 2 graduated late. The rest just left, mostly at the end of their sophomore year. The one's who left certainly weren't drinking, (that describes the one that graduated early and the two that graduated late); they just found that MIT was not the place for them. In 3 of their cases, they left to work for start ups because they felt that they weren't getting anything out of their education, and were going into pretty deep debt for what they weren't learning. The other 2 were the classic "depressed, shoulda gone to art school" types. I hear one transferred to Pratt, I dunno about the other. Not one of us would have won an award for happiest person on campus.
I think some living groups at MIT do not appreciate how much wear and tear MIT can have on your system, especially when you live with people who find out that they don't want to be there. All of sudden, every conversation you have becomes "god MIT sucks and I want out out out." Even if you want to stay, if you're doing p-sets 60 hours a week, and the other 20 is spent listening to people sit in the lounge and tell you how MIT is the cause of all your troubles, you start really having a hard time justifying yourself and your work. You throw on top of that being an unusual/unloved major (I was 14 and 18, aka econ and math), and all of sudden you don't even get basic respect anymore. MIT gets pretty bloody lonely at that point. And then when you turn to the bottle for some solace from the miserable folks around you and the uncaring professors who are too busy bossing around grad students and pretentious UROPs ... you get told that your bad attitude is due to "drinking."
No, that campus is divided by more than just an East/West line. I just wish more graduates appreciated the "diversity of experiences" that MIT carries.
Re:I'm more then skeptical (Score:1, Interesting)
I find your story HIGHLY unlikely. The only way a student can be thrown out of a class is if they are disruptive. Extremely disruptive. We're talking physical violence, or shouting and not allowing the class to proceed for a long time.
Actually, I've seen people getting kicked out of dorms for not being PC with a comment. Once you say something that the PC-police thinks is insensitive of gender and/or race, they can overreact. The guy I saw getting kicked out of his dorm made some comment to a girl (he didn't touch her or said anything threatening, but it was in poor taste) and then got kicked out for sexual harassment and threatened to get kicked out of school unless he went to special sensitivity classes.
Children aren't stupid, and they're very manipulative.
There are very few children in college, save for the eventual 12 year old genius. Calling 18-22 year-old children (and subsequently treating them like children) is a huge problem with our society.
he very fact that you are on this forum promoting this anecdote as some example of evil liberal professors will not be unknown to your child
He didn't use this as an example of evil liberal professors. He used it as an example that not every class is worth attending, and that not every professor is a brilliant lecturer imparting knowledge on the students. If you don't agree that most classes in college have horrible professors, than you never went to college. I've had a good 10% of fantastic professors, 40% of professors who were at least open to helping you out personally if you had additional questions, and the other 50% who just cared about their research. You're not missing much by not going to most classes.
The red flag was when you said he made one mild statement, and the professor few into a rage and then he shut up.
He didn't say the professor flew into a rage. He said she "stammered." From my experience (the event I described above), I think she stammered when she interpreted what the student said as sexist, and didn't know what to do about it right there. If it is one of those "understanding" and "diversity" classes, she saw him as a disrupting influence in the class, and reported him as making sexist comments. He could appeal, but considering that the president of fucking Harvard got voted to be censured for those comments, I would guess most boards would probably vote that the kid did indeed make sexist comments by approving of the comments made by president of Harvard. He's better off just moving on to another class, just as he apparently did.
Nobody is going to fly into a rage because of one comment.
You won't believe this either, but I was sitting in class just 6 years ago working on homework from another class while the professor lectured. Most of the class were similarly engaged in other stuff (class of about 15), when suddenly the man screams at the top of his lungs that we're all being disrespectful for not being focused on him, and that if we don't want to listen to his lecture, he certainly wasn't going to give it. At which point, he walks out and slams the door.
Granted, it doesn't feel good when the class isn't paying attention to what you're saying (I was a TA in grad school, so I know what it feels like). However, that's usually a sign that the class already knows what you're trying to explain, so you should ask a couple of questions to determine if that's the case. If it turns out it is, you move on to the next topic, if it turns out they're just not interested, don't take it personally. Your job is to give them the information, so give them the information. If they don't get it, they'll fail the exams, and you fail them. If you can't handle not being the center of attention, send your TA to teach the class. No excuse to throw a tantrum.
What you just described is an event which will h
Re:I don't get the "50% reduction in failures" (Score:2, Interesting)
So, there is clear evidence that the modern teaching methods, used correctly, provide much more competent C students, it does not necessarily mean the two or three percent of students who are the real future of your field are getting anything more out of it.
From the perspective of a student I couldn't agree more. I find that honours courses are often easier, simply because they emphasize problem solving and cover less material in more depth. By far my worst grades are in giant courses with cookbook-style problems. Could you post a link to some of this evidence?