If that’s the goal, what’s the best use of class time? is a question at the heart of Understanding by Design. The question, which I often ask in workshops, was newly prompted in a slightly different form after I recently watched a few videos on Newton’s Laws from the Khan Academy website.
As you may know, Khan Academy is an online site with hundreds of free lessons and exercises now being used all over the world. It was established by Sal Khan, a former trader, based on his successful tutoring of family members. His ambitious agenda is now supported, in part, by Bill Gates. (You can read more about it here.) The idea is compelling: a comprehensive set of free videos, supported by exercises and some game-like incentives, for students anywhere in the world, available any time. The videos are charming in their low-key low-tech way, not much more than good lectures supported by simulated chalkboard lines, arrows, real-time drawings, and formulae.
The impact of Khan’s work is radical, however, in light of the essential question. Let’s rephrase it slightly: Given our goals, what’s the best use of time when you are in class in school? And what’s the best use of time out of class, with Internet access? Khan’s radical answer – correct, I think – is that information learning is now best done outside of class; class time is too limited to waste it on lecturing in a world of vast high-quality Internet resources. Given the goal, say, of problem-solving, then the answer to our Essential Question is suddenly obvious: the best use of class time is group problem-solving and troubleshooting, based on the basic information learned online; it’s a waste of precious time to have students listen, once, to a lecture available only once; where they lose the vital opportunity to work with others in teams to better engage, explore, argue, and understand.
Eric Mazur, Physics Professor at Harvard, had this epiphany over two decades ago. He stopped lecturing and started devoted class – with 200 students – to small group problem-solving with instant feedback – initially via index cards, now onscreen via those “clicker” systems. You can learn lots more about his methods here and success here.
At around the same time of Mazur’s aha, I heard Doug Heath, Haverford psychology professor, at an ASCD workshop in 1989 make the same point about class time. His solution was that “ancient” technology, the VCR. He videotaped all his Psychology lectures over time; then, he stopped giving lectures in class. Students wanting to see the lectures had to go the Library where they were on reserve. His only rule was that you had to go in pairs and discuss the lecture(s). Class was devoted to discussion of the lectures, research findings, and experimental design and debugging.
The deeper lesson is a moral and civic one, as my daughter, Alexis Wiggins, makes clear in her excellent analysis of her Socratic Seminar experience in a recent Kappan article (channeling an idea that goes back to Piaget and Dewey). School can really only develop moral maturity in students if learning in class is designed routinely to be routinely collaborative and goal-focused instead of isolated and competitive.
So: What are your goals for the year? What, then, follows for the best use of class time if those are your goals? How might you podcast, video, or otherwise archive all your lectures and free class time up for more goal-related activities? Think it through for yourself; better yet, in the spirit of the idea, raise the question in a future team, department, or staff meeting.
Categories:
Tags:
8 Responses
Since we have so little time in class as it is, it only makes sense to have the students listen to the lecture before they come to class so that you use the precious little time you have to discuss and work with peers to digest the information. In this way, you are choosing the time to listen, and hopefully it is a time when you are receptive. How many times do students come to us tired or preoccupied? If only this could become a realitiy. Being in the trenches, I see that this will meet with lots of resistance, especially at the lower grade levels. Unfortunate indeed!
I think the 2nd coming would meet resistance! We cannot let resistance or naysaying get in the way of what’s best for kids. The issue is never what’s most comfortable for adults because if that’s the criterion schools will never change for the betterment of kids, in my view: too much of what is needed to making school more engaging and effective requires teachers to do things that they are not comfortable (yet) doing. So, we turn the question around: how can we minimize resistance to a good idea while cheerfully forging ahead?
To minimize the resistance – we think big, and we start small. Perhaps we begin with introductions to new concepts or some other short learning assignment that takes place outside of the classroom. Then, when those prove to be successful, we stretch them – a little at a time.
I would “resist”. The last thing a young child needs after being in school all day is go home and watch videos on the computer. The school day is long enough. We need to better utilize the instructional time in schools rather than add more home-based work.
Question: Is this model appropriate for middle schoolers who may be at a different stage in their reading/listening/processing proficiency? I have toyed with this idea in my middle school classroom, considering the vast majority of my students do have internet access.
That said, when we do in-class textual analysis, it is not simply the dissemination of declarative knowledge; it is modeling/thinking-aloud the processes of expert reading/writing.
Thoughts?
This is just crazy. Sorry, but Khan Academy is text book style learning, nothing new or innovative about it. You just wrote a post about curriculum writing and problem based learning. You just said how great the Exeter math program is. If Khan Academy is so great then why isn’t Exeter using it? Because it is not so great. Kids need to be exploring, questioning, reading math, communicating etc, not sitting in front of a computer screen. The way Khan Academy teaches math is essentially a plain, old school style lecture. If you need help with a certain concept, then by all means, use it as you would a tutor but it has no place in schools. It should be used at home. I would never want to walk in a math class and see my daughter sitting at a computer screen the entire time.
What’s the best use of class time? All you have to do is look to the most elite schools in the country to find the answer to that. Exeter calls it Harkness. Small class sizes where students discuss, share, explore, listen and “enjoy the richness of human interaction.”
Brenna, Grant never said said Khan Academy videos should be used in the classroom. These videos, along with any ‘informational learning’, should be done outside school.
While there is a place for Khan Academy, the problem, I think, is that students learn better and build their minds more if they construct their learning. Khan is spoon fed.