There are people blessed by their encounter with a great, charismatic teacher whose example they emulate for the rest of their lives. I did not have such an encounter. There is no teacher I’d like to emulate. The best teachers were those that left me to my own devices. If they would just give assignments, grade, explain mistakes, show a better solution, and point to the right books - that would be enough. But no: it was endless lecturing, and it spoiled everything. I hate lectures; I also do not understand the point of lecturing, especially to large audiences, that is to say more than one person. It would be so much simpler to read and ask questions later. I always end up reading anyway. I find following lectures difficult, wasteful. My attention is constantly distracted by the stream of words. The person who mutters these words stays in the way of understanding. The sound of the voice. The face with the moving lips. The hands. The lecture drags on and on. It is impossible to stop and reflect, go back and check things out. It is impossible to skip forward and find what the lecture builds towards to. There are lecturers who are better at the art of exposition, but none beats a written text. I skipped most of the lectures back in college, and those I attended were torture. I understand that in mediaeval Europe this way of self-mutilation was the only method. I can imagine that there were few decent textbooks in the more recent past, and those were expensive. Perhaps there are people who learn by ear better than by eye, although they should be having trouble teaching themselves later on. Maybe such people have to be put together and droned upon. However, I do not think these folks are many. Why does this method of education persist? It is not education only. Why do we have all these plenary lectures, meetings, conferences, presentations? If these are social events, why spoil them by wasting each other's time? Even poster presentations are better than eight straight hours of 15 min talks. Why not have parties instead? Or the real symposia, the Greek ones, with red wine and double flute players? Can the professional hierarchy be established in some other way than through vocalization in front of tired people who cannot leave?
Newton and Euler did not attend conferences. They did no go to workshops, summer schools, study groups, and panels. If they wanted to talk to someone, they went and talked to this someone. If they couldn't, they wrote letters. Nobody complained, and the best science ever done was done in that way. The conferences were for salesmen, traders, and lawyers. Then, in the 1870s, the conferences became the norm of scientific interaction. Lecturing won. Now we have electronic preprints, web access to journals, e-mail, telephone, airmail, uploadable power point presentations. The opportunity to interact with each other is enormous. And yet orally delivered lectures remain the modus operandi.
Why? Would it ever change back?
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August 11 2007, 00:07:49 UTC 4 years ago
I skipped most of lectures during my university years.
Would you mind if I give a link to your post in my journal?
August 11 2007, 00:28:12 UTC 4 years ago
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August 11 2007, 00:57:46 UTC 4 years ago
I guess something can be said for the benefit of human contact. Seeing a professor who clearly knows his stuff serves to reassure the student and also teaches him how to present his own knowledge.
August 11 2007, 02:41:45 UTC 4 years ago
The point of lecturing is to teach your charges how to lecture?
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August 11 2007, 02:23:00 UTC 4 years ago
нужно как-то соединить результаты действия интеллекта и личность, живую жизнь человека - увидеть не безличные плоды мысли, а судьбу и выбор.
August 11 2007, 03:47:33 UTC 4 years ago
August 11 2007, 03:54:31 UTC 4 years ago
lectures can give a sense of proportion and emphasis lacking in
tutorial discussions and seminars where teaching, in following where
the argument leads, may often stray into byways. It should bring to
students modifications of what they find in their textbooks, suggest
wider reading , and, when given by lectures in touch with recent
developments, be a source of stimulus and inspiration. We are
particularly thinking here of lectures to large audiences in which a
genuinely synoptic view of a subject is given. Lectures of this kind
which lay down principles and survey a subject widely are
particularly valuable for first-year students. Attendance at
lectures gives them a necessary frame to a week's work, makes them
feel a part of a community of learning, and leads to wider
intellectual contact with their fellows than membership of small
classes alone can give.
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Anonymous
August 11 2007, 06:51:55 UTC 4 years ago
You and Sowa were not average college students, so I doubt your experiences can be extrapolated to others. Yes, there always is a small group of highly motivated and intelligent students who would educate themselves no matter what, but the rest need daily prodding, consulting, close supervision and all sorts of babysitting in hopes that some day they will grow up, and a few of them do, too.
August 11 2007, 07:03:53 UTC 4 years ago
Anonymous
August 12 2007, 07:34:45 UTC 4 years ago
In fact, the most important parts of lecture might be the small bits at the beginning and the end, when the teacher says - don't forget we have an exam approaching (i.e. prodding and supervision), or, please break up into groups and arrange a meeting this week to work at the problem set together... or it might provide an opportunity for a student to talk to the teacher afterwards etc.
These things can be recreated in a different form with online education: forum discussions, emailing the teacher etc.etc., but I cannot possibly imagine how this can be even approximated without the internets.
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August 11 2007, 07:41:12 UTC 4 years ago
August 11 2007, 08:11:05 UTC 4 years ago
August 11 2007, 14:24:56 UTC 4 years ago
August 11 2007, 08:40:52 UTC 4 years ago
В целях обучения лучше хорошая лекция. "Хорошая" означает продуманный темпоритм, диалог с аудиторией, мотивация слушателей и т.п.
Что касается лекционной формы доклада научных результатов, я считаю общепринятый формат малоэффективным. Логика построения печатных трудов (по крайней мере, в математике) диктуется необходимостью компактного изложения строгих доказательств, что хорошо для проверки, но малопригодно для понимания смысла и новизны методов. Устные выступления на конференциях я бы на 10% посвящал собственно формулировке результата, а остальные 90% отдал бы для объяснения на пальцах "почему так", "откуда", "в чем смысл", "как к этому пришел" и т.п., т.е. тому, что в статье или книге рассказывать не форматно.
August 11 2007, 10:05:57 UTC 4 years ago
На самом деле это совершенно необязательно. И вовсе не помогает проверке. В хорошо написанных статьях и книгах объясняется и смысл, и новизна, и все такое. К сожалению, объяснить "как к этому пришел" объяснить почти никогда не удается, поскольку автор обычно сам не знает, как он к этому пришел.
August 11 2007, 14:52:28 UTC 4 years ago
Если говорить о статьях (не обзорных), то, пусть это и не обязательно, но соблюдается, как минимум, в 80% (или 90%) случаев. Есть "формат", есть обязательные минимальные требования к статье, есть "внутренний редактор", есть задача минимизации рисков на этапе рецензирования и т.п. В конце концов, есть негласный стандарт, нарушать который молодой автор не решится, а к тому времени, когда он станет немолодым, то уже разучится писать по-другому. Тут, кстати, встает вопрос о целеполагании: что первостепенно - изложить свой результат с максимальной строгостью или поделиться новыми идеями, методами, разъяснить главные трудности и способы их преодоления, неформально обсудить связь с другими работами, место нового результата и возникающих гипотез в существующем контексте? Для автора - первое, для читателя, как правило, - второе.
Нарушения формата чреваты: у меня перед глазами живой пример того, как цикл из трех пионерских работ молодого математика (американского, а не то что некоторые могут подумать) в первой половине 70-х фактический выпал из мейнстрима ввиду явного нарушения формата. Через несколько лет результаты эти были переоткрыты (а, возможно, и просто переписаны в более традиционной форме), другими весьма заслуженными математиками, и вошли в обиход под их именами. Молодой математик ушел в CS, сейчас владеет крупной компаний и прекрасной себя чувствует, а историческая справедливость частично восстановлена усилиями более поздних непредвзятых читателей. Т.е. в этом конкретном случае конец - более или менее счастливый, но пример для меня показательный.
Disclaimer: Я говорю о преобладающей тенденции, а не о строгом правиле. Контрпримеры известны.
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August 11 2007, 09:15:45 UTC 4 years ago
But I see that lectures are very important as a (best?) way to organize study process for a large number of students. They can be considered as time-tables for learning activities. Suppose there is one-semester course based on one textbook and suppose reading a book is better than lecturing. How do you organize this process for 100 students? You can collect them all at the beginning and say that they should read this book and then pass an exam on some certain date. That's ok but it is kind of unrealistic that students read the textbook properly (most of them, I think, will read it just a few days before an exam). So on this first gathering you should also provide students with some sort of scheduling - read this part on this week and read that part after and so on. Will students read according to such a schedule? Again there is not much guarantee so it looks like that the better way is to insist on collecting students each week in one room, where they read (just read, the discussion of what they've read is done afterwards on seminars) a particular part of the textbook. At this stage, there is just one more step to invite some guy, who already read the textbook, for retelling the book content to students.
p.s. There might be an "evolutionary" reason here as well. It might be true (at least partially) that when conceiving information for human beings is easier in oral form than in written form since our listening skills are significantly older that our reading skills.
August 11 2007, 14:11:00 UTC 4 years ago
August 12 2007, 06:50:23 UTC 4 years ago
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September 18 2007, 20:25:25 UTC 4 years ago
За свою мат-меховскую жизнь я ни разу не понял полностю ни одной лекции, потому что задумывался о своем или просто впадал в транс (легко гипнотизируюсь) или просто медленно связывал содержание текущей лекции с предыдущими лекциями.
Уж в наш-то век компютеров, легко распечатываемых текстов и интернета можно все лекции отменить (кроме одноразовых, транслируемых в интернете, чтобы был такой редкий аристократический театральный жанр: одноразовая лекция,которую человек долго готовит, репетирует, а потом всему миру читает).
Totally agree with the author. Finally someone said it! Throughout my life at the maths department, I never understood a single lecture: I would either doze into my own thoughts or go into an almost hypnotic trance (I am easily hypnotisable) or would simply be slow in connecting the stuff with the material of previous lectures which I am somehow supposed to remember.
In our age of computers, easily-printable handouts and the internet, it is possible to cancel all lectures (apart from one-offs, broadcasted in the internet to the whole world... let it be a new aristocratic theatrical genre of a well-prepared, well-rehersed Lecture!)
September 18 2007, 22:34:59 UTC 4 years ago
September 18 2007, 22:35:09 UTC 4 years ago
Anonymous
June 17 2008, 10:15:51 UTC 3 years ago
Subject3
Hi all!Bye