By Louise Hainline,
Broeklundian Professor of Psychology and Acting Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies and Research

The world changes-and the way in which we teach sometimes has not responded. Providing our students with the abilities and knowledge to prepare them for productive lives in the 21st century demands major changes in how we teach in universities. The changing demographics of the university student population also call on us to rethink many of the "givens" in what and how we teach.

The Teaching Techniques of Yesterday and Today

Lecturing has a venerable four-hundred-year old tradition, from a time when books were scarce and students relied on the professor as the primary source of information. The best lecturers combine the skills of a scholar with those of a showman, comedian, producer, and preacher. Arguably, in the hands of a skilled practitioner, lectures can be electrifying and effective means of teaching. However, few professors combine all these talents in optimal ways, and even the best of us have off days.

The data on the effectiveness of lectures compared with other methods of teaching suggest that while lecturing is an efficient method of delivering information to students, it does not excel in terms of other indices of learning such as retention, transfer of information to new situations, or measures of problem solving/ thinking. One study on attention of students during lectures found that typically attention increases from the beginning of the lecture to ten minutes into the lecture, and decreases after that. Further, it was found that after the lecture students recalled 70% of the material covered in the first ten minutes, but only 20% of the material covered in the last ten minutes!

While there may be many things that we can do to increase our effectiveness as lecturers, this method inherently puts students in a passive role. We should be searching for alternatives to lecturing promote greater active learning on the part of our students, and to respect the diversity of their backgrounds and abilities as they arrive at Brooklyn College. The work of our colleague Ken Bruffee on collaborative learning techniques is an illustration of such efforts.

Technology Opens New Doors

Another obvious alternative is found in the new educational technologies that have emerged in the last few years. Computer-based instruction, multimedia technologies, and video and laser disk materials all offer the opportunity to replace often passive, regimented, and inflexible presentations that typify the worst of the "old" teaching methods with zestier and more effective techniques. At the same time, it is granted that the new technologies are no panacea. Poorly executed materials, even if based on new media, can be as stultifying and detrimental to learning as a boring lecturer when used without careful thought to design and solid faculty training. Still, some of these new technologies offer us the possibility of creating teaching that is much more individualized than is possible in all but the smallest tutorials.

How Students Learn

As a psychologist, I naturally look to research on human cognition and learning as a guide to how we should teach. An important cue is given in the work of the Russian developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky described the role of the teacher as one who helps build a "scaffolding" for the learner-arranging the material so that it is possible for the individual learner to take the next step by her or himself. Applying much of the research on how novices become experts in intellectual domains, the implication is that good teaching involves building connections between what the student already knows and what we want him/her to learn.

A student does not present a tabula rasa as suggested by John Locke, but comes into any learning situation with a particular set of facts organized according to some coherent principles, even if those principles might not be those we regard as that of the expert. Effective teaching requires finding each student's "zone" of knowledge and developing a strategy for moving that student forward, based on the current level of knowledge and active engagement with the material being learned.

It is easy to see that this is virtually impossible to do in a lecture class of 45 people, but it may be possible with computer-based teaching and appropriate software, tools that allow a directed exploration of the materials, while instructors offer pointers when students have difficulty or go off course. Students can progress at their own pace, taking more time without penalty for topics that are especially hard for them, or if they have less than complete mastery of the language of instruction. Conversely, they do not have to be delayed by spending time on material that is already in their grasp, and so may actually be able to accelerate and/or cover more materials during the term.

One of the fears of many faculties is that the new educational technologies will eliminate the personal relationship between student and teacher. This does not have to be the case, although interactions between faculty and student will change in character. With some of the new technologies, teaching can be much more individually tailored, departing from the strict sequence based on textbook chapters 1 to 15 as the semester progresses. In the ideal case, it can be better matched to the current abilities and level of understanding of each student, in effect giving every student an "electronic" tutor. Properly used, these methods will not eliminate interpersonal interactions, but will transform them-changing the professor from the "sage on the stage" to a coach and facilitator as students actively explore the material in a field, and evolve their own understanding rather than neatly prepackaged "truth."

Faculty Development & Effective Courseware:
The Keys to Success

Research suggests that there are two keys to effective educational use of the new technologies. The most important is faculty development-helping faculty become comfortable and confident about using these methods. A very close second is developing appropriate courseware, which is unfortunately still not widely available.

Many faculty who embark on the effort to use new technologies in their teaching eventually decide that they need to write their own course software. Until recently, this has required that faculty become programmers. However, new software tools are emerging that promise to provide larger units and modules, greatly easing the problem of creating visually-attractive courseware. Good graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are not the same as good instructional material, but freeing faculty from having to deal with the nuts-and-bolts of creating courseware will enable them concentrate on the pedagogical principles that the software is to embody.

The Changing Role of the Library

Changes in modes of communication have always had an impact on the university. The invention of the printing press eventually put books within the reach of individual scholars and students; indeed, Thomas Carlyle once characterized the university as a community of scholars gathered around a great library. Yet today, the concept of "library" is changing quite rapidly. The library is becoming a nexus of remotely-accessed data bases that can be searched via the Internet, with resources delivered to the desktop directly in electronic form or as paper documents sent by telefacsimile on demand. The new electronic library is less and less exclusively the place where books reside. It is becoming a resource for electronic searching and retrieval that can exist literally all over the world. Taking Carlyle's definition, this development creates the image of a "virtual" university quite different from the bricks and mortar of our alma maters.

The Library has become the center of electronic teaching and learning at Brooklyn College. As faculty, we should be shaping the kinds of services and equipment that we need the Library to provide so that we can learn to use these new technologies effectively. Some courses have already been offered, new equipment is in place or soon will be, and relevant departments are beginning to accumulate representative CD-ROMs and other software for instructional use. Drop in to the new facilities and chat with Barbra Higginbotham, Howard Spivak, and their staff about what you need to become come comfortable in experimenting with these new technologies in your classes. The 21st century awaits.

A Personal Bibliography

These are some books that I've found helpful in thinking about the issues of how to teach in the year 2000, if you want some summer reading on these matters. [Each of these books is either present in the Library, or on order.]

J.T. Bruer, Schools for Thought: A Science of Learning: A Science of Learning in the Classroom, MIT Press, 1993. [LB1060.B78 19931 A good introduction to the pedagogical implications of recent research on cognitive science and human learning, with specific examples of curricular innovations embodying these ideas.

B.G. Davis, Tools for Teaching, Jossey Bass, 1993. [On order.] An up-to-date discussion of college teaching strategies and suggestions for improving teaching for faculty with all levels of experience. The book includes some good chapters on dealing with diversity and new instructional media and technology.

K.E. Eble, The Craft of Teaching: A Guide to Mastering the Professor's Art, 2nded.,josseyBass, 1988. ILB2331.E328 19881 A venerable book about the teaching at the university level which reminds us that teaching is more than just technique (probably reassuring to those who are somewhat technophobic). Still, the revised edition includes a discussion of new educational technologies. The book is a classic for good reason.

W.J. McKeachie, Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers, 9th ed., D.C. Heath, 1994. [LB1738.M3519941 As the edition number attests, an enduring, even if a bit dry, treatment of many issues in teaching. It is particularly strong on discussions of research on the effectiveness of different teaching methods. This edition includes chapters on student diversity, new teaching technologies, and teaching ethics.

M.J. Weimer, Improving College Teaching, Jossey-Bass, 1990, and the shorter and livelier M.J. Weimer, Improving Your Classroom Teaching, Sage, 1993. [Both titles are on order.] Both deal with a range of issues and strategies for developing instructional effectiveness. The students in my seminar on college teaching particularly like the Sage version.