Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Value-Adding Lectures

Lecturers contribute a bare minimum if all they do is repeat what's in the text or the slides. The situation is worse if you have a group of students (as I believe I do) who are independent learners and can absorb all the basic references without much help.

What, then, ought lecturers do to add value? Here are some ideas, by no means exhaustive:
  • Give a fresh slant to what's in the textbooks - either give a new perspective or just challenge everything the writer says
  • Lecture on a related sub-topic (one not in the generic handouts)
  • Facilitate a discussion or a case-study (thus taking the class away from recall-mode to application-mode)
  • Get the students to present
  • Show a video
  • Facilitate a project which takes them out of the classroom (kinda like a case-study on steroids)
  • What else?

Adding value nowadays usually involves creating new value. Whatever this is, it's probably not repeating what's already available.

2 comments:

classroommng said...

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ash said...

a case study on steroids? how refreshing :P

i find that using Google Documents and a blog helps kids to pick up research skills - it's amazing how little they know about online collaborations.

once Google creates an OS online education will have an even greater platform.