The Limitations of the Magical Sage

My previous post and and a recent Washington Post article both show how the appeal of the magical sage is clear -- but the limitations of the magical sage approach are even clearer: lack of engagement, lack of interaction, and lack of active learning, among others. If you don't want to take my word for it, find out what MIT itself has to say about the limitations of the lecture approach, no matter how magical the sage...

As described in the previous post, it would be hard to find a better lecturer than Professor Lewin. Yet MIT is moving away from the lecture method for its own physics students. Instead, MIT has adopted what it calls TEAL (Technology-Enabled Active Learning), a pedagogical approach modeled in part on the "studio physics" model instituted in the mid-1990s by Professor Jack Wilson at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Why? MIT's description of its Electromagnetism I course (8.02) notes that "even with an outstandingly effective and charismatic lecturer like Professor Walter Lewin, lecture attendance at the end of the term in MIT introductory courses hovers around 50%." One could interpret this as a function of spoiled MIT students not appreciating what they have -- all the more reason to offer these lectures freely to people who appreciate them. Nevertheless, as the MIT description also notes, "no matter how strongly one feels about the intrinsic worth of the lecture format, it is hard to argue that it is broadly effective when half of the students do not attend the lecture." Even in the best lecture courses, students spend most of their time sitting passively watching demonstrations, reading blackboard notes, or (the vast majority of the time) listening to the professor talk. As the MIT 8.02 course description notes, "this lack of student engagement is arguably one of the major reasons for the failure rates (typically 15%) in these introductory courses. More importantly, this lack of engagement is the reason many students leave our introductory courses (usually their last courses in physics) feeling that physics is dry and boring."

The stated purpose of TEAL is to design a course which "engages the students more deeply, so that they come away from these introductory courses with more of an appreciation for the beauty of physics, both conceptually and analytically." They do this with course design based on the premises that teacher-student and student-student interaction are important factors in promoting learning, that active learning is superior, that problem solving is an effective learning approach, and that "hands-on experience with the phenomena under study is crucial." Collaborative work is also emphasized.

The first three factors, of course, have been staples of quality online learning design for the past ten+ years, and online education has also helped to increase the use of collaborative work projects as well as problem solving.

Of course, second-rate learning experiences are often better than no learning experiences at all. And given the billions of hours of accumulated seat time programmed into our posteriors, it is no surprise that there are people who like lectures, who prefer discussions as formal discourses rather than conversations. Some of the examples from the Washington Post article illustrate the advantages of providing access to course materials in specific circumstances. But as the 8.02 course illustrates, MIT knows that highly effective learning experiences do not revolve around magical sages. There are so many ways to design first-rate learning experiences which, as learning experiences, surpass anything that the most magical of sages can offer.