As an anthropology major, I am told in class after class how much humanity has advanced since men and women hunted and gathered. But what we have achieved since some chimpanzee decided to go bipedal five and a half million years ago has fallen short in an essential way. As Washington University students register for classes, I would like to address an issue that applies to nearly every student and professor on campus.
The classes in which I learn about the development of humanity are taught, for the most part, in lecture format. But I hate lectures. I have never willingly attended a lecture nor will I ever. I’d just as soon sit and watch a dog wag its tail for an hour and a half than sit through a professor drone on about some topic that probably appeals to no one else in the room besides himself. Students who sign up for a class on a specific topic are not necessarily interested in-nor will they be intellectually aroused by-every subtopic addressed in a given lecture.
I realize, as I have been told, that class is not like a close college basketball game that provides excitement every minute. But there are definitely innovative ways to engage students in large lecture classes that will keep even the tired students from losing interest and falling asleep.
The “turn to your neighbor” technique is most effective if the class has upwards of 100 people. Before beginning her lecture, one of my professors would ask students to turn to his or her neighbor and discuss how anthropologists in the future would interpret the garbage, for example, that we make today. Though half the class probably turned to his or her neighbor to discuss weekend plans, the other half who participated got thinking about how an anthropologist could take a dirty sock out of context or make a brilliant connection between a beer can and a college student.
The “prepared questions on notecards” technique works well for classes of 10 to 100 students. For this technique, a professor would hand out notecards with questions on them to groups of 3-6 students. The students would discuss the questions, and time permitting, present a few of their answers to the class. This technique involves more time and desk-moving, but it is also worthwhile.
Since I take about two weeks of shopping before I enroll in a class, I usually feel confident that my classes will be worthwhile and not unbearably boring. In other words, I have been lucky as far as my professors go. If I have fallen asleep in class, I’d like to think it was because I didn’t let my roommate go to bed the previous night until I beat him in Playstation football rather than because the professor was uninteresting.
Not everyone has upbeat teachers. In order to compensate, teachers who lecture need to make strides to keep their students awake and interested. In this column, I’ve suggested a couple techniques professors might use to do so. Hopefully, WU’s professors will adopt these ideas-and generate their own-as they teach their classes next semester.