Essay on How to Make Teaching and Learning Intresting in Class Room
It’s not the strongest of the species that survives,” Charles Darwin once observed, “but the one most responsive to change.”
If only it were true in higher education.
It’s interesting to observe, isn’t it, how much higher education is still driven by a “brute force” model of delivery? As much as we might wish it were otherwise, postsecondary courses and degree programs are still largely delivered in a one-size-fits-all manner, and those students who can’t keep up are simply left behind, sometimes irretrievably so – the higher education equivalent of natural selection, some might say.
(I once had lunch with a colleague, for example, who told me with no small amount of pride that he only taught to the 10 percent of the class who “got it.” The others, it seemed, were not worth his effort.)
But surely anyone – teacher, student, or otherwise – who has ever sat in a classroom has seen glaring evidence of the fact that not all students move at the same pace. Some are prepared to move more quickly than the majority while others require greater attention and more time to master the same material as their classmates. The limits of mainstreaming diversely skilled students are obvious to all and yet we largely persist in the vain hope that greater numbers of students will learn to move at “class pace” if only we underscore their responsibility to do so in syllabuses and first-class lectures.
Of course, when teachers face classes of 20 or 40 or 200 students, personalized instruction isn’t much of an option. It’s simply too expensive and impractical – until now, perhaps.
Witness the countervailing perspective emerging these days that the curriculum is the thing that needs to change pace. Indeed, after a number of years of quiet experimentation we may now be on the cusp of an evolutionary moment – one that promises greater personalization, deeper engagement, and stronger outcomes for students of many types. And it may even be affordable. In fact, it may even be
If only it were true in higher education.
It’s interesting to observe, isn’t it, how much higher education is still driven by a “brute force” model of delivery? As much as we might wish it were otherwise, postsecondary courses and degree programs are still largely delivered in a one-size-fits-all manner, and those students who can’t keep up are simply left behind, sometimes irretrievably so – the higher education equivalent of natural selection, some might say.
(I once had lunch with a colleague, for example, who told me with no small amount of pride that he only taught to the 10 percent of the class who “got it.” The others, it seemed, were not worth his effort.)
But surely anyone – teacher, student, or otherwise – who has ever sat in a classroom has seen glaring evidence of the fact that not all students move at the same pace. Some are prepared to move more quickly than the majority while others require greater attention and more time to master the same material as their classmates. The limits of mainstreaming diversely skilled students are obvious to all and yet we largely persist in the vain hope that greater numbers of students will learn to move at “class pace” if only we underscore their responsibility to do so in syllabuses and first-class lectures.
Of course, when teachers face classes of 20 or 40 or 200 students, personalized instruction isn’t much of an option. It’s simply too expensive and impractical – until now, perhaps.
Witness the countervailing perspective emerging these days that the curriculum is the thing that needs to change pace. Indeed, after a number of years of quiet experimentation we may now be on the cusp of an evolutionary moment – one that promises greater personalization, deeper engagement, and stronger outcomes for students of many types. And it may even be affordable. In fact, it may even be