Can Introductory Course Students Learn Much From Textbooks?

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent post “Can Introductory Course Students Learn Much From Textbooks?” [Hake (2013)]. The abstract reads:

ABSTRACT: PhysLrne’s Diane Grayson (2013) in her post “Flipped classrooms” pointed to physicist Jim Gerhart as one who utilized what she (and the PhysLrnRs responding to her post) ahistorically regard as the “flipped classroom,” i.e., requiring students to read material to be discussed in class before attending the class.

Sure enough, in his Millikan Award acceptance speech Gerhart (1986) at http://bit.ly/14qL5yS wrote: “I announce to my classes that I will not deliver any expository lectures on physics, that they will have to read their texts carefully if they are to follow what does take place in class.”

Gerhart reinterates an ancient theme: predating or contemporary with Gerhart’s read-the-textbook-before-class method:

a. Over 2 centuries ago, Samuel Johnson http://bit.ly/17PdW5Y, via James Boswell (1791) at http://bit.ly/qfDXPz said “People have nowadays . . . got a strange opinion that everything should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. Lectures were once useful; but now, when we can all read, and books are so numerous, lectures are unnecessary.”

b. A half-century ago, chemist Frank Lambert (1963) http://bit.ly/17IbWJ0 in “Editorially Speaking: Effective Teaching of Organic Chemistry” at http://bit.ly/1a4rqJr wrote: “Why do instructors ignore the contribution of Johann Gutenberg to chemistry? Thanks to him, we now have movable type! A few chemists can write books which are readable. Why then do we fail to use these excellent modern texts as the principal bases for our courses?”. . . . .

c. Contemporary with Gerhart, the late chemist Robert Morrison (1986) http://bit.ly/1dLd30J delivered his classic talk “The Lecture System in Teaching Science” at http://bit.ly/hLMElH. Therein he said: “I happened to run into Frank Lambert . . . . . He was urging what he called ‘the Gutenberg Method’ of teaching - because, of course, it was based on the fact that the printing press had been invented several hundred years ago. Frank became my guru. I still mentally bow towards the west when this subject comes up.”

BUT WAIT! Gerhart, Lambert, and Morrison seem to have had evidence that most of their students were, in fact, capable of substantial learning from textbooks. That such learning may NOT have been the case has been suggested by POD’s Russ Hunt at http://bit.ly/15EhNfA; Math-EdCC's “Haim” at http://bit.ly/14ZoHAv; and NAEP’s Perie & Moran (2005) at http://1.usa.gov/18G0T1M. The latter wrote on p. 15: “only 5 to 7 percent of 17-year-olds demonstrated performance at level 350—the ability to learn from and synthesize specialized reading materials.”
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To access the complete 15 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/1dMUKYZ.

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
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For William Hogarth’s (1736) http://bit.ly/15Esohg skewering of the lecture method see “Scholars at a Lecture” http://bit.ly/18sWPDm.


REFERENCES [URL shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 06 Sept 2013.]
Hake, R.R. 2013. “Can Introductory Course Students Learn Much From Textbooks?” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/1dMUKYZ. Post of 06 Sep 2013 12:06:06-0400 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to various discussion lists..

Fortieth Anniversary of Donald Bligh's "What's the use of Lectures?"

Some blog followers might be interested in “Fortieth Anniversary of Donald Bligh’s What's the use of Lectures?” [Hake (2011)].

The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: Philosopher George MacDonald Ross http://bit.ly/w167Iu posted a link http://bit.ly/rsHEFd to his essay “What's the Use of Lectures? - Forty Years On.” Ross wrote [bracketed by lines “RRRRR. . . . . ”:

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It is 40 years since the first publication of Donald Bligh's classic work What's the Use of Lectures? (London, Bligh, 1971). It was a devastating critique, based on thorough empirical research, of the use of the lecture as the main method of teaching in higher education. It had been established that the only educational function lectures were capable of achieving was the transmission of factual information, and even then they were no better than other methods, and lecturers wildly overestimated the amount of information students were capable of remembering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Among educationalists, it is established orthodoxy that lecturing is the least effective way of transmitting knowledge, understanding, and intellectual techniques from teachers to students; and it is a striking measure of the marginalisation of educational researchers and developers that, on this issue at least, they have had virtually no influence on institutional structures or academic practice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The idea of a university which replaces listening to the reading of a text in a lecture by the reading of the text in printed form is known as a “post-Gutenberg University” - an idea first mooted by Frank Lambert in the 1950s: http://bit.ly/rvZB2f. It is long overdue, and one of the tragedies of current university education is that we have abandoned the disputation, which really did force students to think independently and imaginatively, and retained the lecture, which has been redundant for half a millennium.
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STLHE-L’s Martin Rosenzweig (2011) responded (slightly edited):

“I would suggest that lecturing persists because:
a. it is ‘cost-effective’ - one lecturer serving many (paying) auditors,
b. it is how most lecturers were ‘taught’, a case of ‘monkey see, monkey do’,
c. teaching at the vast majority of major universities is unrewarded or under-rewarded activity.
In the USA, the persistence of lectures has led to higher education’s being Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (Arum & Roksa, 2011).”
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To access the complete 17 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/tJWK9R

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands
President, PEdants for Definitive Academic References
which Recognize the Invention of the Internet (PEDARRII)
rrhake@earthlink.net
rrhake@earthlink.net
http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake
http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi
http://HakesEdStuff.blogspot.com
http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake


“Physics educators have led the way in developing and using objective tests to compare student learning gains in different types of courses, and chemists, biologists, and others are now developing similar instruments. These tests provide convincing evidence that students assimilate new knowledge more effectively in courses including active, inquiry-based, and collaborative learning, assisted by information technology, than in traditional courses.”
Wood & Gentile (2003) “Teaching in a research context”


REFERENCES [All URL’s shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 29 Oct 2011.]

Hake, R.R. 2011. “Fortieth Anniversary of Donald Bligh’s What's the use of Lectures? ” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/tJWK9R. Post of 29 Oct 2011 20:27:25-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several academic discussion lists.

Wood, W.B., & J.M. Gentile. 2003. “Teaching in a research context,” Science 302: 1510; 28 November; online as a 209 kB pdf at http://bit.ly/oK46p7.