Lecture or Interactive Teaching? New Study of an Old Issue

June 26th, 2011 at 07:18am Under Education report

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This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

Professors have lectured for centuries. But how effective is lecturing to students compared to working with them?

A new study compared two classes of a beginning physics course at the University of British Columbia in Canada. There were more than two hundred sixty students in each section. Both were taught by popular and experienced professors.

The study took place for one week near the end of the year. One class continued to be taught in the traditional lecture style. The other professor was replaced by two teachers. They had little teaching experience but received training in interactive teaching methods. The training was led by Carl Wieman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who leads a science education program.

There was almost no lecturing. The teachers put the students in small groups to discuss and answer questions. They gave them readings and quizzes to finish before class so they would come prepared to discuss the material.

Professor Wieman says before the experiment with these and other activities, test scores for both classes were the same.

CARL WIEMAN: “There was a great deal of careful data collected showing how identical the two sections, these two large sections of the class were beforehand. And this focused very much on looking at exactly what could be learned with the different methods from the classroom experience, the time when you have the maximum instructor interaction, or face-to-face interaction time.”

Afterward, both classes took the same test. Students in the interactive class scored nearly twice as high as those in the traditional class. Attendance also increased that week.

Graduate student Ellen Schelew was one of the teachers. She says the methods they used are designed to encourage students to think like scientists.

ELLEN SCHELEW: “Their brains are turned on. They’re thinking hard and they’re really working through these problems. So even if they don’t have enough time to complete a given problem, they are prepared to learn from the instructor feedback that always follows groups’ tasks.”

The study appeared in May in the journal Science. It seems to confirm earlier findings about lecturing to large classes. But some experts have criticized the way the study was done.

Both of the researchers who taught the class, Ms. Schelew and Louis Deslauriers, were also authors of the study. This could raise questions about whether their involvement might have influenced the results.

Professor Wieman is currently on leave from the University of British Columbia and the University of Colorado. He is the associate director for science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

He says research has shown better ways to teach based on evidence about how the brain learns. And he hopes more professors will learn that how someone teaches may be more important than who does the teaching.

And that’s the VOA Special English Education Report. I’m Christopher Cruise.

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US Schools Under Pressure to Deal With Sexual Violence

June 20th, 2011 at 07:12am Under Education report

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This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

Federal officials in the United States are telling schools that they need to do a better job of preventing sexual violence and helping victims.

The Obama administration has released the first guidance on how schools should deal with the problem under a nineteen seventy-two law. That law is known as Title Nine. It bars discrimination on the basis of sex in any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.

The Department of Education says sexual violence is a form of sexual harassment of students which violates Title Nine.

Last month, Vice President Joe Biden joined Education Secretary Arne Duncan at the University of New Hampshire to announce the new efforts. Secretary Duncan says the problem has not received enough attention.

ARNE DUNCAN: “Sexual violence is one of those issues we all wish didn’t exist. And too often, our society has chosen to ignore it, rather than confronting it openly and honestly. And that denial must end. Every school would like to believe it’s immune from sexual violence, but the facts suggest otherwise.”

A study found that one in five women is sexually assaulted while in college. About six percent of male college students say they have also been victims.

Mr. Duncan said that by some estimates, more than one in ten high school girls are physically forced to have sex in or out of school. He said the numbers are probably low because many sex crimes are never reported.

In one recent school year, public schools reported eight hundred rapes or attempted rapes and almost four thousand other cases of sexual violence.

The Education Department has written a nineteen-page letter to all school systems, colleges and universities that accept federal money. It explains requirements for them under Title Nine in dealing with sexual violence. These include making sure victims know their rights and are kept informed about the progress of the investigation. Schools must also protect victims from suspects who may still be in school with them.

Secretary Duncan says police and prosecutors have their job to do, but schools also share responsibility under federal civil rights laws. Investigations of sexual violence often take too long, he says, and the victims are not taken seriously. Victims are more likely to do poorly in school, get depressed and abuse drugs and alcohol.

And that’s the VOA Special English Education Report. We’ll have more on this subject next week. You can find links to information about dealing with sexual violence in schools at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also post comments on our website and on the VOA Learning English page on Facebook. I’m Christopher Cruise.

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