Death Knell for the Lecture (and Conference)?

By Krešimir Josić
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Recently the New York Times ran a series of essays about the future of computing and its impact on society. Most were thought provoking. However, the article Death Knell for the Lecture by Daphne Koller hit closest to home. Prof. Koller argues that the traditional 50 or 80 minute lecture format is outdated and ineffective. Instead we should allow students to use online resources, including shorter instructional videos (those provided by the Khan Academy are a good example).

Dr. Koller makes good points: Online technology would allow us to assess student performance better, and individualize instruction. Good students could move ahead quickly, while those that struggle could get help in exactly those areas they need. This is particularly important in face of the reduction of public funding for education and soaring student/teacher ratios.

However, having taught online courses and classes with a large number of students, I believe that the news of the demise of the traditional lecture have been largely exaggerated. While online classes are convenient, interactions are frequently stilted. When lecturing online, I feel like I am talking to myself. Many students choose not to attend the online lectures, so online courses are frequently nothing more than self-study courses. Even in a regular classroom, my students asked that I stop writing on a tablet, and use a whiteboard instead. They preferred it, although it meant I would not be posting the notes online. I was glad they did.

New technology is changing the way we communicate in many different ways. But I fear that there is a large human component that we don’t take into account when predicting its impact. It takes time to finely tune and meld the technology to our human quirks. For instance, skyping, even using a large screen, doesn’t feel anything like talking to somebody in person. The visual and auditory input we receive is not that dissimilar, but a number of little (but essential) details are just not the same. Just imagine how much money could be saved if we held our Snowbird meeting online every two years. It would be relatively straightforward to stream all the lectures and organize "breakout" chats, but most of us will agree that the meeting would be the poorer for it. And it is not the technology that is difficult, it is us.

I do agree that we need to make available to our colleagues the materials we use in our classes and to publicize our research. Indeed, the soon to be expanded DSWeb Tutorial section will provide an excellent forum. The new editors, Anne Catlla and Eric Shea-Brown, plan to split the tutorials into two sections: one containing course materials and the other tutorials and expositions. Each will include a range of materials -- from self-paced tutorials with some multimedia to tools that only work in context of a class (lecture notes, ideas for projects, demo codes). Similarly, many of us have collaborated on creating the online Encyclopedia of Dynamical Systems.

Our classrooms and our meetings are bound to move online in the future. How quickly this will happen depends on how quickly we are able to develop technology that will allow us to believe that "we are there". In the meantime, the web still provides a great way to catch those events that we couldn't catch live (like Donald Knuth's wonderful Christmas lecture), and to share the materials that will make our lectures more relevant and interesting.

Krešimir Josić


PS In the last issue of the magazine Carson Chow wrote an interesting editorial about the future of scientific publishing. A new article by Dwight Kravitz and Chris Baker presents a good overview of what is wrong with the current system, and offers interesting suggestion of how to improve it.

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