U.S. News and World Report found college professors from California to New York actively encouraging use of cell phones, computers, and the internet in order to engage a tech-savvy generation of students. The article ‘Classrooms Go High-Tech to Engage Students’ by Megan K. Scott was published July 6, 2009. Since then, technology has only become more ubiquitous and some teachers are using it to their advantage.
Some professors make their lectures available as podcasts, provide live streaming video of classes and maintain discussion boards so students can post questions. They encourage tweeting, blogging and chatting online with other students.
That’s what it takes to engage this generation, said Gary Rudman, who has a consulting firm that studies teens and young adults. His GTR Consulting recently released a report on teens and technology.
“Technology is such an inherent part of their lives,” he said. “They have come to expect it every step of the way. When they come to college, they are expecting this technology to be incorporated into their learning.”
Schools are catching on. Scott McLeod, an associate professor of educational leadership and policy studies at Iowa State in Ames, has a backchannel, an online secondary conversation, where students can share information, ask questions, such as ‘What did he just say?’ and chat about a concept while he is teaching it. Think whispering to the friend next to you in a lecture. (Many people use Twitter as a backchannel).
At the same time, The Chronicle of Higher Education reports the dean of the Meadows School of the Arts challenging his faculty to “teach naked,” that is, without computers. In fact, he took computers out of all the classrooms. Jose A. Bowen believes students learn best by actively engaging. The article ‘When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom‘ by Jeffrey R. Young was published just days following the above article, on July 20, 2009. The article includes a four-minute video from Dean Bowen explaining his innovative approach to teaching.
College leaders usually brag about their tech-filled “smart” classrooms, but a dean at Southern Methodist University is proudly removing computers from lecture halls. José A. Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, has challenged his colleagues to “teach naked”—by which he means, sans machines.
More than any thing else, Mr. Bowen wants to discourage professors from using PowerPoint, because they often lean on the slide-display program as a crutch rather using it as a creative tool. Class time should be reserved for discussion, he contends, especially now that students can download lectures online and find libraries of information on the Web. When students reflect on their college years later in life, they’re going to remember challenging debates and talks with their professors. Lively interactions are what teaching is all about, he says, but those give-and-takes are discouraged by preset collections of slides.
Dean Bowen, however, is far from anti-technology. In fact, he suggests professors lecture outside of class, via podcast, and use class time for interactive discussion. He encourages professors to take boredom out of class by killing the traditional PowerPoint driven lecture method of delivering content and using classroom time to engage students with the topic.