It could be argued that math and languages are the most difficult subjects to teach. Both involve teaching the mind to process things in completely new ways and require extensive, repetitive practice. Some people are innately capable, and some just can't seem to get it. At the college level, they also share the expectation that in four classes out of five, your professor will speak a language you don't. Maybe it's these common challenges that are behind the prevalence of online, "interactive" learning programs in these subjects.
In the long battle against laziness and failing grades, the latest panacea is the Internet. In every corner of academia, professors have discovered the Internet and realized they can force us to do the homework we should be doing on our own while the computer handles the labor of administering and grading the work, providing professors with a printout of grades and their students with greater enlightenment.
The Texas A&M Math Department is pilot testing a course redesign in a few sections of its Math 141 classes. Lectures are watched online before class in short video segments rather than being administered during class. Homework assignments are also completed online. To fill class time, students are divided into small groups and complete group assignments over the material covered in the videos. To compensate for the amount of time spent working outside of class, 75 minute class periods are shortened to 50 and those classes meet only twice a week.
The program, developed with the assistance of a $350,000 grant from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, seems like a good one. It's built on sound principles, such as students learn more easily from peers than from their teachers (of course, this relies on the assumption that the peers know what they're doing) and some less sound ones - for example, the idea that students will learn as well from the static videos as from an interactive person.
The video lectures are time consuming, yet fail to deliver the material as effectively as a live lecturer. Students can't ask the video to phrase something a different way or review a background concept. Review sessions and the availability of the professor in class serve to fill this gap, but cannot do it well enough. Despite all this, the greatest flaw in the system is the attitude that it conveys to students: that we need to be (and will be, like it or not) force-fed our course work.
So why the change? Why resort to a flawed system instead of that old one we've had for years? The problem with math isn't that it's inherently difficult, or that the math department has its collective head on backwards. It's not even a problem with math, it's with us. It's that most students are looking to do the least amount of work possible to get the grade without dropping the ball on any of their other courses. This means non-obligatory practice is unlikely to get done. Competence at math (like a lot of things) necessarily requires practice.
Because professors (for the most part) genuinely care about their subjects and want students to learn, they have been trying for years to reconcile these forces. But, since we're college students, supposedly adults, our professors can't force us to practice. The only way they can "force" us to do anything is by grading it, and even so it's our choice to do it or not.
Students don't do optional, said G. Donald Allen, professor of mathematics and director of the Center for Technology-Mediated Learning in Mathematics. No one can pay attention for a whole lecture, so time is wasted and material missed. Instead, students in the redesigned courses become active learners. It makes them put in the required time outside of class and makes better use of in-class time, while framing the professor as a friend and ally.
In last semester's first two pilot sections of the redesign, test grades (overall) went up and most students enjoyed the new format.
The course redesign could be useful for a lot of students, especially those who have difficulty learning from traditional lecture format classes and recognize that they will have a hard time putting in the required out of class effort unless it's mandatory. For me, this is somewhere on par with going to some Christian private schools where students have mandatory chapel times, curfews, rules about who can and can't be in dorm rooms and the friendly RAs periodically search rooms for banned substances. Basically, students pay someone to help them maintain their morals through threat of punishment or expulsion. Similarly, A&M will help you maintain your study habits by way of grades.
The unfortunate truth is that the Internet is not magical; it's certainly no substitute for a real person. It's also no excuse for piling on more work than the credit hours are worth, however well intentioned it may be. Materials like the online videos should be available for motivated students to make use of, but not mandatory. College students are not high schoolers, even though we sometimes act like them. We shouldn't need to be forced to do the work necessary to learn; it's time to grow up and get self-motivated. And when we are lazy and we don't do it, we fail or Q-drop and have to pay for the course again or change our major. In any case, we are held responsible for our actions.
It's not your professor's job to make you learn, and it's time the professors and students alike realized it.
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