Alex Tabarrok writes,
Ayres argues that large experimental studies have shown that the teaching method which works best is Direct Instruction (here and here are two non-academic discussions which summarizes much of the same academic evidence discussed in Ayres). In Direct Instruction the teacher follows a script, a carefully designed and evaluated script. As Ayres notes this is key:
DI is scalable. Its success isn’t contingent on the personality of some uber-teacher….You don’t need to be a genius to be an effective DI teacher. DI can be implemented in dozens upon dozens of classrooms with just ordinary teachers. You just need to be able to follow the script.
I’ll buy this–it fits with my own experience (yes, the usual n=1 reasoning that we follow in our lives). My teaching has improved over the years as I’ve tried more and more to follow the script (a script that I write, but still…). I’ve also tried to encourage new teachers to follow the textbook more–even if it’s a crappy textbook, it seems to work better to follow it rather than jumping around or going with improvised lecture notes.
Regarding Ayres’s advice, I would add only that it helps to have student involvement. Thus, the “script” is not a pure lecture, it includes class-participation activities, students working in pairs, etc.
Finally, one of Alex’s commenters writes, “DI might be effective, but it sounds inhumanely boring.” No! Not at all. A good script allows for creativity. In fact, the creativity can be well spent in getting the students involved, rather than in the preparation of lecture materials etc.
I agree 100%. Follow the book use the provided materials. It cuts your prep way down and then you can spend more prep time on the interesting things rather than the routine things you have to cover.
Students seem to respond well to this too, in my experience.
I have experienced the extremes as a student and instructor. I was a graduate student getting training in biology concurrently with K6 science education, while taking classes from professors who ran either very teacher-centered or student-centered lecture halls.
I learned very little in the student-centered biology courses. We spent so much time on basic concepts (which most of us already knew) we didn’t learn much else. We could have deeply learned much more. Sure, students "enjoyed” themselves and were awed by the novelty. One particular instructor was trying to apply ALL of the hands-on inquiry approaches that were being promoted for K-6 science classrooms. The instructor was nominated for a teaching award.
This professor did not consider the developmental differences between young adults and children, not to mention the structural differences in the two academic settings. In K-6 the learning is expected to occur in the classroom and in higher academia students are also expected to learn when the instructor is nowhere to be found.
After teaching both statistics and biology at the college level I have recommendations in agreement with Andrew’s. Have a script that includes points where you facilitate student engagement, but include those points only when this helps to meet very specific learning objectives. The objectives should be specific learning outcomes, not participation for its own sake. There are a lot of tools from the K6 classrooms that you can modify for use in higher Ed, but be careful to not turn your college classes into elementary classrooms.