Who Are You Calling a Lecturer?
A colleague of mine in the Centre for Teaching & Learning in UCD recently pointed out something interesting regarding the way the college pays part-time teachers. For a lecture, they pay €85.90, but for a tutorial, they only give €31.31. It is worth thinking a little about who gets what for whose money out of this?
The only reason for lectures or tutorials is so that the attendees can learn. If they do learn, the activity has been a success. Simple. But surely implicit in these pay-scales is the belief that you learn 2.75 times as much from attending a lecture, as you would from attending a tutorial.
You’d have to contest this straight away. Tutorials tend to be both active and interactive, whereas lectures tend to be didactic (an academic term for one-sided). By most modern educational ideologies, this would give tutorials the edge.
Usually, however, lecturers lecture and post-graduate students give the tutorials. If tutorials are an important part of the educational process, why are they contracted out in this way, and why with such poor remuneration? But more interesting than the questions about tutorials are the questions about lectures, and the people who give them.
The term "lecturer" is bizarre, is it not. It presupposes the means by which you will try to educate your students regardless of what you are trying to teach them. In effect colleges are saying: ‘We want you to teach these people, but we want you to do it by means of lectures.’ And lecturers tend to think in this way; courses are often described in terms of how many lecture-slots they run for.
Also, within these lecture periods, lecturers tend to take a very active role and most shun the idea of allowing student activity. The argument runs that if you give over time for group-exercises or discussions, then you will fail to cover all of your material. But what on earth does the term "cover" mean?
When a lecturer says that he has "covered" something, all that he is really saying is that he has said something out loud in the company of the students. Whether the students have actually learnt anything is incidental. It reminds me of the question: ‘If a tree falls in the woods, does anyone hear it?’ Similarly, ‘If a topic is "covered" in the woods, is it actually covered?’
To most people the term "lecture" has a negative connotation. If someone said, ‘You’re teaching me things,’ it would sound positive and grateful, but if the same person said, ‘You’re lecturing me,’ it would not. To the statement I once read in a presentation skills book, ‘A presentation shouldn’t be like a lecture,’ I would add, ‘Neither should a lecture.’
The ethos in third level institutions is changing. Lecturers (I feel funny using the term now) are required to write down the "learning outcomes" for the students of everything they teach. This shifts the emphasis from what the lecturer does to what the students do. But lecturers are still being given, and in more or less the same way. It has been accepted that there are now learning outcomes to meet, but most academics are still lecturing their way towards these goals.
The real problem with lectures is that there is no feedback loop. Good, bad or appalling, courses are studied, exams are sat, and students graduate. And asking students what they think of it all, which some departments now do, is not the answer. Not only are these surveys often poorly conceived, but students learning new concepts aren’t really in a position to make a broad assessment of the way they should have been taught. It is not as simple as complaining about bad service in a restaurant.
As I have said many times already, a decent study of the process of higher level communication needs to be carried out. The average lecturer, and the average presenter have a very poor understanding of what the audience will remember and learn from what they say, and how to tailor their material accordingly. Perhaps this study could be conceived as a sort of "cost-benefit analysis", to work out exactly what an auditorium of students get for their €85.90.
The only reason for lectures or tutorials is so that the attendees can learn. If they do learn, the activity has been a success. Simple. But surely implicit in these pay-scales is the belief that you learn 2.75 times as much from attending a lecture, as you would from attending a tutorial.
You’d have to contest this straight away. Tutorials tend to be both active and interactive, whereas lectures tend to be didactic (an academic term for one-sided). By most modern educational ideologies, this would give tutorials the edge.
Usually, however, lecturers lecture and post-graduate students give the tutorials. If tutorials are an important part of the educational process, why are they contracted out in this way, and why with such poor remuneration? But more interesting than the questions about tutorials are the questions about lectures, and the people who give them.
The term "lecturer" is bizarre, is it not. It presupposes the means by which you will try to educate your students regardless of what you are trying to teach them. In effect colleges are saying: ‘We want you to teach these people, but we want you to do it by means of lectures.’ And lecturers tend to think in this way; courses are often described in terms of how many lecture-slots they run for.
Also, within these lecture periods, lecturers tend to take a very active role and most shun the idea of allowing student activity. The argument runs that if you give over time for group-exercises or discussions, then you will fail to cover all of your material. But what on earth does the term "cover" mean?
When a lecturer says that he has "covered" something, all that he is really saying is that he has said something out loud in the company of the students. Whether the students have actually learnt anything is incidental. It reminds me of the question: ‘If a tree falls in the woods, does anyone hear it?’ Similarly, ‘If a topic is "covered" in the woods, is it actually covered?’
To most people the term "lecture" has a negative connotation. If someone said, ‘You’re teaching me things,’ it would sound positive and grateful, but if the same person said, ‘You’re lecturing me,’ it would not. To the statement I once read in a presentation skills book, ‘A presentation shouldn’t be like a lecture,’ I would add, ‘Neither should a lecture.’
The ethos in third level institutions is changing. Lecturers (I feel funny using the term now) are required to write down the "learning outcomes" for the students of everything they teach. This shifts the emphasis from what the lecturer does to what the students do. But lecturers are still being given, and in more or less the same way. It has been accepted that there are now learning outcomes to meet, but most academics are still lecturing their way towards these goals.
The real problem with lectures is that there is no feedback loop. Good, bad or appalling, courses are studied, exams are sat, and students graduate. And asking students what they think of it all, which some departments now do, is not the answer. Not only are these surveys often poorly conceived, but students learning new concepts aren’t really in a position to make a broad assessment of the way they should have been taught. It is not as simple as complaining about bad service in a restaurant.
As I have said many times already, a decent study of the process of higher level communication needs to be carried out. The average lecturer, and the average presenter have a very poor understanding of what the audience will remember and learn from what they say, and how to tailor their material accordingly. Perhaps this study could be conceived as a sort of "cost-benefit analysis", to work out exactly what an auditorium of students get for their €85.90.
posted by Barry Brophy at 11:22 AM
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