January 23rd, 2006
Too Much Lecture Material Online = Too Few Students in Seats
By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
Last year I wrote a story on Stanford on iTunes, a pilot program allowing students to download podcasts of lectures they missed. At the time I indicated Stanford University wasn’t the only college using such techniques. Unfortunately, as more and more students “take advantage” (and if you listen to the professors, “take advantage” doesn’t simply mean “use”) of technological aids of this type, such as online notes, online videos of the lectures, etc., etc., more and more students are cutting class, which doesn’t sit well with their professors.
Skipping classes, particularly big lectures where an absence is likely to go undetected, is a time-honored tradition among college undergraduates.
These days, however, some professors are witnessing a spurt in absenteeism after adopting technologies that were envisioned as learning aids.
As many academics embrace the electronic innovations, others are pushing back. To deter no-shows, they are reverting to lower-tech tactics such as giving more pop quizzes or slashing online offerings. Source: Chicago Tribune
We Say: In the cases noted in the story, there were as few as 10% (of 200) of the students showing up at times. Now, I don’t want to date myself, but when I was in college we didn’t have any of this stuff … and if a professor was boring (and I had a few that I had a great deal of trouble staying awake for), you were stuck. You either got notes from someone else or you were in trouble.
I always learned better from going to class than from just reading, so I guess I don’t understand this. The idea of all these extras were to provide additional help, not take the place of lectures. While I agree all this online material is good as a supplement, you certainly can’t ask online lecture notes a question if you don’t understand them. 
Eric N. says:
I am taking an online class for my CS degree (Discrete Mathematics). The professor offered the online students the option to physically sit in the class. I have asked to come to class when I need more information or more one-on-one with the teacher and other students. Otherwise, I read in the eveings and do homework on the weekends (full-time work).
My teacher produces AV Lecture material using a sound file and some powerpoint like presentation software. We turn homework and reading questions in weekly. He addresses our reading questions within a week.
I usually just strip out his audio file and listen to it in 1.5x speed (saves time) — and I still retain majority of the audio presentation. Because most of the material is done at your own pace, any additional information that is provided to you is icing on the cake.
For me, I think it could be feasible for a person to download all the sound clips for their week, and go through them at their own pace. If the students in these classes weren’t going through the material, and failing out in large numbers than I could see for some intervention or modification of the system. However, the students are paying for the privledge of attending school, if they do not go, then it is their (or their parents) loss.
I do understand having to sit through boring lectures and signing in at the end of the class, but assuming that this would keep kids in line probably isn’t a very good method either. Quiz and test results and low attendance would probably show better correlation as to how students are fairing.
January 23rd, 2006 at 6:30 pm
Omari says:
So students aren’t showing up to class? It’s because they don’t need to. If a professor is going to stand up in front of a room full of 500 students and drone on in a 50-minute monologue, why should students show up? The class might as well be on videotape. In fact, I say get rid of the entire live professor and just teach the entire class on videotape.
My point is that lecturing is a one-way content delivery system, and there is absolutely no reason for students to show up if they can just download the lecture. As a matter of fact, reading is a one-way content delivery system, and I learn better by reading, so I’d rather the professor just put his thoughts down on paper so I can read them.
Lecturing is a waste of the professor’s time and a waste of the students’ time. I’m glad the students can at least get the lecture on their own time. Maybe if class were actually a learning experience that capitalized on having students and professor in one room–perhaps (gasp!) DISCUSSION between the professor and students!!–then students would show up even if it were on videotape.
Large classes in college are a waste and a cheap way to educate hordes of undergraduates. Either make class worthwhile, or just put it on video so it can be convenient.
January 23rd, 2006 at 6:52 pm
David Johnston says:
At my college (University of Chicago) we don’t have much in the way of technological learning aids. We’ve got some reading materials in an online “library”, but that’s about it. If you skip class, there’s no way to get the information you missed unless you get someone’s notes. I personally find it more interesting to go to all of my classes anyway. I get to sit around in my room enough, I don’t need to find excuses to do more of it.
January 23rd, 2006 at 9:34 pm
Manuel Viloria says:
Why not make Attendance (it’s not a distance education course, right?) as well as Participation in classroom discussions part of the student’s grade?
Give away the detailed notes online (blog/podcast). Deliver a summarized version in the classroom. That will give more time for Q&A’s and discussion (of the previous lecture).
January 24th, 2006 at 2:22 am
The Deepings says:
I think its a top idea and will certainly help those who are legitimately missing the lessons for a reason.
like having a hangova from the night b4…..
January 24th, 2006 at 6:22 am
ikaruga says:
It sounds to me like the professors don’t like the idea of not having anyone hear their lectures
When I was an undergrad and in grad school, I would skip out on lectures all of the time and I did just fine, graduating with honors. Attendance is not necessarily correlated with performance.
However, the classes I would *never* skip were the ones were the professor actually answered questions—where a discussion took place. These are the classes that matter, whether they be tutoring sessions or actual class time.
January 24th, 2006 at 6:40 am
Spindrift says:
Strange how some things have changed.
When I was sitting in a lecture hall for too many of my undergrad classes, a grad student would enter the hall at the appropriate time, insert a video tape into a VCR, start the machine and walk out. We watched pre-recorded lectures for a large number of classes.
We never saw the professor except on tape or by some chance meeting in the hallway. “Appointments” with the professor were usually handled by grad students as well.
Skipping lectures or just arranging for someone to audio record the lecture for later review became routine, after all, you could almost never have a dialogue with the professor during class anyway.
I suspect that the various colleges and universities have discovered they don’t need the professors beyond the initial course preparation. After that, they can recycle the recordings over-and-over and use a lower paid employee to shuffle and grade student papers.
The empty classrooms must make for challenging contract negotiations for professors.
January 24th, 2006 at 8:19 pm
Blake says:
Seems to me that the people complaining are the professors. If the students didn’t like this, and were getting poor grades, then they would show up. These are young adults and shouldn’t be forced to come to a lecture if they don’t need to.
In the end its all about the education, why force boring lectures upon them, if they can do as well with online supplments?
If this is all about the professors worrying about their jobs, then they need to adapt or become obsolete.
January 26th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
JD on [TBD] says:
More links
More links: Abandoned robotic dogs, Pixar history, massively multiplayer dancing, and more… lots of links I found this week while searching technology-related discussions, that are just too interesting to close out of my browser windows…….
January 26th, 2006 at 4:37 pm
barry.b says:
LOL! this is the reverse of what we (the “old guard” at a multimedia college I worked at for a number of years) were trying to do. but we didn’t (quite) have the tools nor the committment/support from management.
for sheer economic reasons we teachers realised a few years ago that bums on seats and the old chalk’n'talk just wouldn’t cover it anymore (and our jobs were at risk - how right we were):
Here in Brisbane (Australia) we have have a population of 1.3 million and with a specialist line like multimedia (think design, graphics, storyboards, drawing, etc and tools like Photoshop, Flash, Director, et al) there came a point where there just weren’t enough people comming thru the doors. Online learning wasn’t ramped up and the business suffered, laying off lots of staff (me included).
Both the University of Southern Queenland (based in Toowoomba, pop.100,000) and University of New England (Armidale pop 25,000) are much larger learning institutions than the bricks’n'morter required in such small towns - thanks to their large online learning capabilities. Without distance education both quality and quantity would suffer.
With Australia being larger than the whole of Europe and less than 20 million people, the tyrany of distance is all too common. We *need* this.
>> more and more students are cutting class, which doesn’t sit well with their professors
Big deal! I had a few students who I rarely saw but corrosponded via email. I understood why: they were graphics designers (eye-candy types) and I was teaching dull boring programming and databases. I suspect that these lecturers making these complaints are lazy and disorganised handing out vital information or instructions for assessment in lectures instead of being up-front and pre-planned. In the “shoe’s on the other foot camp” I’m planing to further my own qualifications - while working - and I’ll be buggered if I’m going to waste my (precious working) time in some duff lecture by some teacher that’s 10 years behind the times. Gimmie the course materials, the assessment details and an email address to the tutor. The rest you can keep.
Everyone has their own preferred learning methods. It’s the results that matter and if the student can pass (with proof that it’s their own work, that is) without going to a single lecture or using online materials/video instead then good on ‘em.
If they pull it off they’ll be developing modern skills where this may be the only on-the-job training they could ever have (and they’ll have to find their own online learning materials, and probably in their own time). I’m seeing this already as working web developers (programmers) are using online forums/email lists, articles, blogs, breezo’s, etc to develop OO skills and understanding java-inspired design patterns as they drag their skill-set into the 21st century: stuff that most have *never* been taught (or in another example upgrading their ASP classic to ASP.NET skills)
Where it gets hairy is when students fail to pass. Those online resources and instructions better survive review and auditing. If the lecturer is NOT consistant between online and face-to-face then there’ll be hell to pay…
…and if the lecturer *is* consistant and does a good job in structuring their online materials and the students *still* fail then, they were going to do so either way…(a teacher has to respect the students right to fail)
to lecturers: embrace this new technology as new toolsets to do a better job. If it annoys you that students are skipping class, then swallow some ego and accept it. the whole point is the education of students, not filling lecture halls..
eh, my 2c only
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