Should Your Professor Get 'Naked'?
Many colleges and universities are investing in professors' increased use of technology in the classroom, but at least one dean is pushing for the opposite, something he calls "teaching naked," National Public Radio reports.
Jose Bowen, dean of the Southern Methodist University Meadows School of the Arts, is encouraging professors to stop using technology in the classroom and instead alter current lecture-based collegiate teaching models. Instead of having students come to class to ingest information being disseminated by a lecturing professor (likely one using PowerPoint or Blackboard), Bowen wants students to use these technologies to familiarize themselves with material before coming to class. He then hopes class time can be devoted to discussion of course material among students and their professor.
"First contact with the material is about you, the student," Bowen says. "Then you come into the classroom, and now we have what's called learning. We work together on problem sets, we argue. And then you go away and I assess you."
Bowen considers his proposal a more innovative way to learn.
He says colleges should consider "changing their ways" before they become outdated and obsolete. Colleges and universities "are medieval institutions. We haven't changed in a very long time, and our basic mode of operation is based upon medieval technology," he says. "I mean, the lecture was an efficient way to deliver content a thousand years ago. It's just not anymore."
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Tags: colleges | teachers | technology | Southern Methodist University | innovation
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So
Many teachers have always assigned advance reading from textbooks---to be done before class so that informed discussion is what the class time is to be used for.
Are we saying here that a "naked professor" would also post his outlines and powerpoints in advance on a website, so that a student should more or less have "heard" the old-time lectures before arriving to class?
The next question is: If this can be done, why not also video the best lectures from the best professors AND the best classroom discussions from last term, duplicate them, and cut half the cost out of college?
I'll bet I know the answer to why THAT would meet universal resistance, and I'll bet you do too. But, hey, it's something that couldn't be done a thousand years ago---and now now it can be. Uh, oh. Professors might find themselves as laid-off as everyone else whose job was replaced by a computer.
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