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| Are university lectures doomed? | Are university lectures doomed? |
| (5 months later) | |
| Philip Hensher: novelist and professor of creative writing at the University of Bath Spa | Philip Hensher: novelist and professor of creative writing at the University of Bath Spa |
| Can it be true? Are there still institutions where academics stand at the podium and start to read out from dog-eared print-outs of last year's lectures? Do undergraduates still take what notes they can for an hour, and then go and read a book on the subject? | Can it be true? Are there still institutions where academics stand at the podium and start to read out from dog-eared print-outs of last year's lectures? Do undergraduates still take what notes they can for an hour, and then go and read a book on the subject? |
| I went to Oxford in 1983, and I think in three years I went to seven lectures – not lecture courses, seven lectures. One was a bloke whose book I had absolutely loved. His lectures – well, his first lecture, I never went to any more – consisted of his reading from the MS of his first chapter. I'd read it. The only lectures with anything to be said for them were brilliant performances. Learning? That happened in libraries, and talking to people who knew more than I did, not taking inadequate notes in lecture rooms. In four years doing a PhD at Cambridge, I went to exactly six lectures, of which five were by Pierre Rosenberg on Fragonard, so those don't count. | I went to Oxford in 1983, and I think in three years I went to seven lectures – not lecture courses, seven lectures. One was a bloke whose book I had absolutely loved. His lectures – well, his first lecture, I never went to any more – consisted of his reading from the MS of his first chapter. I'd read it. The only lectures with anything to be said for them were brilliant performances. Learning? That happened in libraries, and talking to people who knew more than I did, not taking inadequate notes in lecture rooms. In four years doing a PhD at Cambridge, I went to exactly six lectures, of which five were by Pierre Rosenberg on Fragonard, so those don't count. |
| Since I took to lecturing myself, I generally approached it as cabaret. You and I have stood together and yammered in front of silent audiences of sighing Germans. Since nobody much walked out, we believed ourselves to be extraordinarily fascinating. This discovery for academics is thrilling, and so there is an incentive to hang on to the hour-long lecture. But, realistically, if one wanted to teach anyone anything, I think one should make them participate, interrupt, ask questions, disagree, talk back, and that's the alternative route I've taken. There are probably a dozen lecturers in this country so brilliant you don't want to do anything but listen to them for an hour. The rest of them should approach learning as an exchange with students. Is the lecture room the best place for rapid exchange? No. Rethink the lecture format entirely. Get students to ask questions and read books to find stuff out. | Since I took to lecturing myself, I generally approached it as cabaret. You and I have stood together and yammered in front of silent audiences of sighing Germans. Since nobody much walked out, we believed ourselves to be extraordinarily fascinating. This discovery for academics is thrilling, and so there is an incentive to hang on to the hour-long lecture. But, realistically, if one wanted to teach anyone anything, I think one should make them participate, interrupt, ask questions, disagree, talk back, and that's the alternative route I've taken. There are probably a dozen lecturers in this country so brilliant you don't want to do anything but listen to them for an hour. The rest of them should approach learning as an exchange with students. Is the lecture room the best place for rapid exchange? No. Rethink the lecture format entirely. Get students to ask questions and read books to find stuff out. |
| Mind you, that bloke Mühlhäusler who used to lecture on pidgins and creoles at Oxford ought to have been on the telly. | Mind you, that bloke Mühlhäusler who used to lecture on pidgins and creoles at Oxford ought to have been on the telly. |
| John Mullan: writer and professor of English at University College London | John Mullan: writer and professor of English at University College London |
| Is there perhaps a logical flaw in your rhetorical swirl? Your poor lecture attendance record 30 years ago, though sadly typical of undergraduates of that dark era, is not in itself evidence that the majority of lectures that were available to you at the time were dire, futile or ineptly delivered. Five years earlier, I was behaving in rather the same fashion as you. I had gone along with the foolish idea, prevalent at the time, that a lecture, being a monologue, was an oppressive imposition on our free young intellects. The lecture was inherently authoritarian and tedious. Then I discovered, in my final year, that lectures could be rather helpful. In an effort to compensate for woeful second-year exam results I attended whole courses and found that many lectures economically yet humanely conveyed information and – if you were lucky – argument. In fact, when I remember inspiring teaching from those days it is mostly lectures: Tony Tanner on Conrad, Jeremy Prynne on strange poems, Eric Griffiths on almost anything. | Is there perhaps a logical flaw in your rhetorical swirl? Your poor lecture attendance record 30 years ago, though sadly typical of undergraduates of that dark era, is not in itself evidence that the majority of lectures that were available to you at the time were dire, futile or ineptly delivered. Five years earlier, I was behaving in rather the same fashion as you. I had gone along with the foolish idea, prevalent at the time, that a lecture, being a monologue, was an oppressive imposition on our free young intellects. The lecture was inherently authoritarian and tedious. Then I discovered, in my final year, that lectures could be rather helpful. In an effort to compensate for woeful second-year exam results I attended whole courses and found that many lectures economically yet humanely conveyed information and – if you were lucky – argument. In fact, when I remember inspiring teaching from those days it is mostly lectures: Tony Tanner on Conrad, Jeremy Prynne on strange poems, Eric Griffiths on almost anything. |
| Participation, interruption, disagreement – all those student responses you celebrate are virtuous, of course, so you have class or seminar teaching, where they are part of the deal. But sometimes the students want to know what the academic knows. Learning shouldn't all be exchanging thoughts with students (and in the sciences and quantitative subjects it often cannot be this). The students can find it frustrating (as they tell us) when they have to spend their time listening to the least informed but most opinionated fellow student in the room. | Participation, interruption, disagreement – all those student responses you celebrate are virtuous, of course, so you have class or seminar teaching, where they are part of the deal. But sometimes the students want to know what the academic knows. Learning shouldn't all be exchanging thoughts with students (and in the sciences and quantitative subjects it often cannot be this). The students can find it frustrating (as they tell us) when they have to spend their time listening to the least informed but most opinionated fellow student in the room. |
| Your bloke who read out his chapter was hopeless, but nowadays there is rather more pressure on lecturers to produce something that actually animates his or her listeners. Otherwise the punters complain, a fact of which you must surely approve. | Your bloke who read out his chapter was hopeless, but nowadays there is rather more pressure on lecturers to produce something that actually animates his or her listeners. Otherwise the punters complain, a fact of which you must surely approve. |
| PH: The trouble is that, as I'm sure you know, there is not much correlation between students' lecture attendance and performance – I couldn't have got a better degree. The students who skip seminars, on the other hand, don't do well. The only thing I discovered from those seven lectures was how to say "The husband of the Queen" in Tok Pisin, which has, admittedly, come in surprisingly handy over the years. What I discovered in seminars and tutorials – well, there was eight weeks one-to-one with Roger Lonsdale on Pope, which was incomparable. | PH: The trouble is that, as I'm sure you know, there is not much correlation between students' lecture attendance and performance – I couldn't have got a better degree. The students who skip seminars, on the other hand, don't do well. The only thing I discovered from those seven lectures was how to say "The husband of the Queen" in Tok Pisin, which has, admittedly, come in surprisingly handy over the years. What I discovered in seminars and tutorials – well, there was eight weeks one-to-one with Roger Lonsdale on Pope, which was incomparable. |
| In lectures, I let students disagree, but the aim is also to find out what they know, and to let them find out what they know without knowing it, like the characteristic superlatives of women and men, or the different ways people greet each other if they're friends or strangers. Students who come to my lectures watch disagreement, and get asked questions, and join in. One day I am probably going to become the sort of terrible writer who stands up and says: "It is possible to make your writing more vivid by shifting it into the present tense, and next week, I will tell you about the seven fundamental plot structures." But not just yet. | In lectures, I let students disagree, but the aim is also to find out what they know, and to let them find out what they know without knowing it, like the characteristic superlatives of women and men, or the different ways people greet each other if they're friends or strangers. Students who come to my lectures watch disagreement, and get asked questions, and join in. One day I am probably going to become the sort of terrible writer who stands up and says: "It is possible to make your writing more vivid by shifting it into the present tense, and next week, I will tell you about the seven fundamental plot structures." But not just yet. |
| In the meantime, if you want to hear from experts, concisely, wittily, knowledgeably and without interruption, there are always books. | In the meantime, if you want to hear from experts, concisely, wittily, knowledgeably and without interruption, there are always books. |
| JM: My experience is that plenty of the most brilliant students assiduously attend lectures: being intelligent, they intend to squeeze the most out of their passage through academe. Of course they could find out things from books, but there are hundreds of these saying different things in different varieties of clotted prose. Much better 50 minutes of pithy introduction from someone who has sorted the wheat from the chaff on the students' behalf. | JM: My experience is that plenty of the most brilliant students assiduously attend lectures: being intelligent, they intend to squeeze the most out of their passage through academe. Of course they could find out things from books, but there are hundreds of these saying different things in different varieties of clotted prose. Much better 50 minutes of pithy introduction from someone who has sorted the wheat from the chaff on the students' behalf. |
| What you say about the necessity of interaction is true of what you teach: creative writing. But this is a special case. It's not true for economics or geography or even English literature. A good lecture on Jonathan Swift, say, will mean that undergraduates are then in a position to sit in class and have an informed discussion of Gulliver's Travels. | What you say about the necessity of interaction is true of what you teach: creative writing. But this is a special case. It's not true for economics or geography or even English literature. A good lecture on Jonathan Swift, say, will mean that undergraduates are then in a position to sit in class and have an informed discussion of Gulliver's Travels. |
| Eight weeks one-to-one with Roger Lonsdale on Pope does sound great – I wish I'd had it – but most universities don't have the resources (or Roger Lonsdale) to provide anything like this. Quelle dommage. | Eight weeks one-to-one with Roger Lonsdale on Pope does sound great – I wish I'd had it – but most universities don't have the resources (or Roger Lonsdale) to provide anything like this. Quelle dommage. |
| PH: I don't really know about economics or geography. But I can't believe that a format that doesn't encourage immediate dissent or close questioning is ideal for learning. There's a massive resource in a lecture room that most lectures don't exploit – an attentive and curious audience, who might be allowed to say, "I don't know" or "I don't understand" or "I don't agree" or "Why haven't you mentioned…" | PH: I don't really know about economics or geography. But I can't believe that a format that doesn't encourage immediate dissent or close questioning is ideal for learning. There's a massive resource in a lecture room that most lectures don't exploit – an attentive and curious audience, who might be allowed to say, "I don't know" or "I don't understand" or "I don't agree" or "Why haven't you mentioned…" |
| Of course that would slow things down, and cost more. I can't help thinking the thing we're only touching on is that lectures are a cheap way of delivering an hour in the company of academics. Very few universities are ever going to be able to deliver eight weeks of one-on-one with Roger Lonsdale. But can anyone think an hour in a crowded room watching a series of PowerPoint slides that you could print out and read at home anyway is still ideal? Is it a good use of anyone's time and money? | Of course that would slow things down, and cost more. I can't help thinking the thing we're only touching on is that lectures are a cheap way of delivering an hour in the company of academics. Very few universities are ever going to be able to deliver eight weeks of one-on-one with Roger Lonsdale. But can anyone think an hour in a crowded room watching a series of PowerPoint slides that you could print out and read at home anyway is still ideal? Is it a good use of anyone's time and money? |
| JM: But you can't profitably read PowerPoint slides or handouts or whatever illustrates a talk without the human who is doing the talking. For there is human interaction at a good lecture, just as much as at any live performance. (Which is why online lectures are disappointing.) Do come and sample any of my colleagues' lectures and you'll find nothing like that man in Oxford who bored you to death all those years ago. Honestly. | JM: But you can't profitably read PowerPoint slides or handouts or whatever illustrates a talk without the human who is doing the talking. For there is human interaction at a good lecture, just as much as at any live performance. (Which is why online lectures are disappointing.) Do come and sample any of my colleagues' lectures and you'll find nothing like that man in Oxford who bored you to death all those years ago. Honestly. |
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