Posts tagged with classroom.
Undergraduate education needs to move in a different direction
Despite existing for hundreds of years, nobody can agree exactly what the mission of the academy really is. (There is actually a branch of philosophy devoted to this debate.)
What is the right balance of teaching and research for a fully-tenured professor?
The debate is hot again following a column by Margaret Wente, in a piece entitled "Want to know why professors don't teach?" She laments the loss of a "golden age" when university classes "were small and many of our professors were creative and enthusiastic."
I can't help but jump into the fray.
Wente is correct in pointing out our undergraduate education problems will not be solved by throwing more money at universities. Despite record funding, especially funding of capital projects, undergraduate education is more crowded than ever. Partially, this is the fault of government funding not keeping pace with record enrolments; but it is also the result of universities under prioritizing their undergraduate programs.
Universities control their endowments and could use these funds to further enhance their undergraduate programs. A year ago, I attended a luncheon to hear a university president speak. He lamented the increase in "restricted donations" to his university. Alumni were donating too much money focused on undergraduate financial assistance. According to the president, the university needs more donors to give "unrestricted gifts" to enable the academy to focus on its priorities. One can only assume he meant something other than undergraduate financial assistance by this.
One of the big problems is the misuse of technology by universities. Instead of using technology to improve the quality of education; they are using it to decrease the quality. Instead of using advances in architecture and construction to build better classrooms, they are building bigger classrooms. Instead of using cost savings from the lower per-unit cost of assembly line education to improve student services and create learning spaces for students, universities spend their money on fancy athletic facilities, luxury dorms, and new stadiums. They also face significant pension deficits and infrastructure costs due to years of underfunding of maintenance budgets.
The only thing growing faster than class sizes seems to be the compensation of senior administrators and ridiculous student fees. (I'm willing to bet Wente didn't have to pay a user fee to graduate. Yes, at many of our fine universities, graduation is considered an extra option. If universities were selling cars, they would be charging extra for the steering wheel.)
One of the largest cost items for universities can be human resources. For a few thousand dollars up front, the university can save hundreds of thousands by having one professor teach 400 students an introductory course instead of ten professors teaching 40 students each.
Universities have invested heavily in new multimedia technologies and sound systems for the gigantic lecture theatres they've been building in the last decade, so that that professor can teach large classes.
Politicians get a share of the blame for this problem; they prefer to spend taxpayers' money in ways that create ribbon cutting ceremonies. A new "assembly-line" lecture theatre always results in a ribbon cutting ceremony or two. A Minister can usually get three or four announcements out of a new building. It is smoke and mirrors: everyone seems to think this new building is going to improve teaching quality and we, the media, uncritically deliver this message to the public. Providing funds to renovate existing buildings or operating funds to improve undergraduate education does not create the same ribbon cutting opportunities.
No government in Canada has the courage to reform universities and force them to allocate larger portions of their budgets to undergraduate education. No university is going to destroy their world "ranking" by investing in undergraduate education when they can spend those same dollars on research. (Rankings by academics for academics will be the subject of a future post.) Unless governments are willing to give universities even more money in the middle of the recession, the only way to improve undergraduate education is more efficient use of current funds.
One solution is to use technology to deliver online lectures so more professors can spend more time with smaller numbers of students and there wouldn't be a need to spend money building gigantic lecture halls and the technology to support that form of teaching.
They can start by using Internet technology to teach first- and second-year undergraduate classes. In this age, it is no longer necessary for each university in this country to use limited resources to create their own curriculum for introductory courses. Institutions need to meet, allocate courses and create online lectures. Instead of professor wasting the limited time their contracts allow for teaching reading slides to a class of hundreds, professors can hold more office hours and assist students to learn.
In recent years, undergraduate education has been moving closer and closer to the regurgitation model of secondary education, where the content of lectures is tested by "multiple-guess" exams. A move to independent study combined with increased faculty availability would bring undergraduate education firmly back into the traditional higher education model.
A great example of the interactive lecture style I'm referring to already exists at Hamilton's McMaster University. The introductory psychology course is no longer taught in a physical lecture theatre; it is offered entirely online. You can view the first lecture online and judge the quality of instruction for yourself here: http://www.intropsych.net/lectures/01-levels/player.html
I know I prefer Dr. Kim's online lectures over sitting in a lecture theatre with 500 other people while an underpaid, overworked sessional lecturer reads the textbook at me.
Tagged with
classroom,
funding,
reform,
undergraduate,
technology,
size
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JOEY COLEMAN