To wish my university lectures were... well, lectures

[reallyyyy]

I started a new course a few weeks ago, it's my second degree and it's a healthcare degree so that might be why. But our lectures are so interactive and filled with so many activities that feel like a waste of time. I had a 2 hour lecture today and 40 minutes of it was spent making posters of different topics to put on the board at the front, with the vision that we would be learning from each other. Only, we couldn't read the posters as they were too small and far away and it didn't teach us anything. There are also lots of 'discuss in pairs X, Y and Z' and it's not helpful or useful. It was nice in the first week as a bit of an icebreaker but now it just feels annoying.

I'm finding it frustrating sitting in a 2 hour lecture and being taught 1 hour of content. I'm not sure if it's because I studied a different degree before but lectures were 2 hours of information and I learnt a lot from them.

We have seminars too so it's not like I'm not enjoying the interaction, just not in a lecture.

I know IABU but I think I'm just overly tired from getting up at 5:30am to commute in for a lecture just to spend half the time making posters or colouring in diagrams.

I had this too and it was 'problem based learning'. We taught ourselves and had to go away with a problem each time, come up with a presentation and then at the end the tutor would say if it was OK. Whole thing was a farce and we were so unprepared for the job (AHP). We also did the posters and role play.

Yup, don't blame the lecturers. It's how we're told we have to teach. Everything has to be interactive and 'co-produced' with the students.

But we also have rapidly increasing student numbers, and diminishing teaching teams/resources. So you end up trying to 'interact' with a group of 100+ students. It's madness.

I had no idea this was normal. How do neurodivergent students find this style?

I teach medical students (and PA students, and DITs). The more interactive sessions get significantly better feedback from the undergraduates than the more traditional lecture format. Hence trying to be more interactive.

I did a part time MSc about 15 years ago - quite a few of the subjects were taught like this; TBH because most people were mature students in senior roles in the field, one could learn as much from peers as from the academics. My MBA was similar - and that was 30+ years ago.
I think it would be v different with undergraduates though - but don't have a first degree to compare.

There was only one student that came to the course straight from an undergraduate degree - he dropped out fairly early on.

Lots of lectures are now recorded and uploaded. Maybe this is a way to encourage physical attendance- it would be harder to do this over zoom/Google meet so you have to come in.

I gave up a language course because of all this working in pairs melarkey. It's not the way I learn and I retain nothing from it. If I'm surging ahead - I don't want to hold back for a slower partner. If I'm struggling - I want to work it out at my own pace. There was a lot of making posters and colouring in - fuck that, that's not what I was paying fees for.

having taught and learnt through both styles... active learning gets the best returns in term of ability to recall information and implement skills

also "coloring posters" - let s not be silly and reductive. If this is flipped teaching, there is a lot more to it than that, assuming you did the pre reading...

yea, I have learnt a lot in interactive training over the years

Never volunteer to be scribe
No one else in the class knows anything either
Run fast in the other direction if you see post it notes
etc etc etc

Ridiculous and infantilising to suggest grown adults don't know if they are learning or not

In these stupid wanky interactive training sessions, we know when we are NOT

I did a course with the open university a few years ago - we sat in a room with an expert, and he told us things

O the relief! after years of teacher "training" on how to arrange your post it notes

I learnt at 10x the rate

This is how lecturers are told to do it. Less lecturing, more interactive activities. There has to be a range of activities. Self directed, problem solving, flipped classroom etc.

A didactic reaching session of chalk and talk is unusual these days.

Clearly the session you described didn’t meet your learning style. It properly met some other students though. Across your course you will hopefully experience a range of different teaching approaches and some will fit with you more than others.

I learn by doing so what you describe would suit me. Sitting listening for 2 hours would send me to sleep.

YANBU. I’m a secondary school teacher and we’d get CRUCIFIED for teaching this way nowadays. It’s generally agreed that lessons should be in silence, with minimal pair/group work, and the teacher actually teaches. It seems like some unis didn’t get the memo and it’s still 2004.

Generally agreed by whom?

Plus universities are teaching adults not children so not directly comparable.

@Tatumm This style is awful for ND students - one of the reasons it’s no longer used in secondary school.

@Lagoonablue ‘generally agreed’ means all recent research points to direct instruction and retrieval practice. We teach the children directly in small chunks, then they do a quiz to practise using the new knowledge, then they self mark. No chatter, no post-it notes, no flipped teaching. I teach a ‘practical’ subject so I model parts of the task on a visualiser, which the children then try out and practise.

Is this partly a behaviour management practice though? Ie they re more likely to just chat/ misbehave if told to work independently? I do remember teachers letting us do group discussions at school and we’d just chat all lesson and then quickly write a few points at the end but this was the late 80s.

That's only one style of secondary teaching though (self quizzing/ no excuses/slant etc)

That also wouldn't work for my kids who aren't in that type of school and don't have self quizzing/cookie cutter classes.

@Sparehair Not behaviour management, it’s curriculum and learning. Children are taught key concepts each lesson so a lesson spent chatting would be completely unthinkable these days. Lessons are mainly silent and very teacher-directed. Behaviour is good because the children are engaged and learning.

Yes. You are teaching children though. In groups of 30 probably. Pedagogy for children not fully transferable to adult learners. You can’t tell 50 adults to sit in silence and learn. For 2 hours.

I am based in a university teaching academy current thinking on adult learning still suggests a mixed approach. And while some people on here would enjoy didactic lectures, many people would not.

Flipped classroom, quizzes, videos, pair and share, mini presentations etc all still play a part. It does depend on the subject too though. However you can’t teach skills for example, in a lecture

@OneMoreStepAlongTheRoadIGo

We don’t do SLANT or Michaela-style lessons, but I believe most state secondary schools follow this type of pedagogy (primaries less so). My eldest is ASD/ADHD and I think he’ll benefit from the clear boundaries and instructions when he joins next year.

Some neurodivergent students, certainly not all.

The fact that you can move, it’s multi-sensory, uses skills other than listening and processing a wall of spoken information is a massive improvement for many neurodiverse students.

Some might struggle with the interactive aspect and there should be adjustments for them but definitely not all of them.

Yanbu, op, they think we’re all 5 nowadays. The sad thing is that if you took someone trained in this system and put them in a lecture they would not be able to focus for long or assimilate the information, and then they would feel that it was the lecturer at fault too. And then they wonder why older people think the country is dumbed down and qualifications can’t be trusted.

Yup agree there Chocolate. It can be too confining for some.

The rise of self quizzing/classes as drilling information etc I think is directly related to the increase in content in GCSEs and the need for memorization. I still think this is a backwards step. I started teaching a billion years ago before this and there was much more freedom within the curriculum to persue ideas and thoughts.

I do love a good lecture, but I'd have been bored rigid with endless drilling/self quizzing.

I hate this too. It’s only bearable if you’re lucky enough to be in a computer lab for lectures where you can at least look up the relevant sources and read them while people are waffling at length and completely missing the point.

I loved lectures in my undergrad days - jam packed with information that had been complied and crafted by someone at the top of their field. I used to come away buzzing, and get lost in the library for a few hours reading more.

I wish there was at least an option for this now. Pre recorded lectures with a dead professor sounds the better option.

Edited to add that I’m neurodivergent

You sound like OFSTED. And it's well known children learn best by doing not being talked at.