Streamline Training & Documentation: Good Lectures

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Good Lectures

The lecture approach to teaching has come under suspicion in recent years, and deservedly so. So often the teacher is speaking while the learners are in a parallel universe, day-dreaming, instant messaging, checking e-mail, even sleeping. Results are subpar, to put it mildly.

On the other hand, today's condemnation of the lecture method is too sweeping. To make this point, I'll first give the floor to Thomas M. Rollins, former chief counsel of the United States Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and founder of The Teaching Company. Then I'll say a quick word about my own experience with two of his company's lecture courses.

In explaining how The Teaching Company began, Rollins recalls "an unforgettable experience that opened his eyes to the extraordinary power of a great lecturer captured on tape." As reported at The Teaching Company website:

Rollins was facing an important exam in the Federal Rules of Evidence but was not well prepared. He managed to obtain videotapes of 10 one-hour lectures by a noted authority on the subject, Professor Irving Younger.

“I dreaded what seemed certain to be boring,” Rollins says. “I thought that few subjects could be as dull as the Federal Rules of Evidence. But I had no other way out.”

Rollins planted himself in front of the TV and played all 10 hours nearly non-stop. The lectures, he says, “were outrageously insightful, funny, and thorough.” Watching Professor Younger's lectures was one of Rollins's best experiences as a student.

Rollins made an “A” in the course. And he never forgot the unique power of recorded lectures by a great teacher.

I bought The Teaching Company's course on the history of the English language several years ago. It sat around the house for quite awhile before I finally started listening to the 18 hour-long tapes last summer when I had to make a series of trips between Northampton and Boston.

I was delighted with what I learned as I drove back and forth on the Mass Pike. Seth Lerer, the Stanford professor delivering the lectures, had done a fine job of organizing material that went a long way to satisfying my curiosity about the story of English, a subject that has always fascinated me.

After debating for awhile whether I should indulge myself by buying the 24 hour-and-a-half tapes in the Teaching Company course on "How to Listen to and Understand Great Music", I decided to go ahead, and after another stretch of days out on the Pike, I'm at Lecture 14.

I'm learning plenty from the prof, music historian Robert Greenberg. I'm geting better at recognizing different composers' work, while also picking up the essentials of how western music has changed over the centuries. After years of being frustrated by how readily I confuse composers, I'm finally making progress on remembering who wrote what, and I'm able to pick out details in compositions that previously flowed by, unnoticed by yours truly.

So, as salespeople listening to training tapes in their cars have always known, lectures have a valuable role to play in helping people acquire knowledge and skills. The key is to choose lecturers who hold listeners' attention and to consider the pros and cons of alternate methodologies before making your final decision concerning whether the lecture method is suitable for achieving the desired results in a particular situation and with a particular audience (i.e., do take learning styles into account).

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Labels: Teaching

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