What do we learn from lectures?
In 1972, Dr. Myron L. Fox, an authority on the application of mathematics to human behavior, gave a lecture to a group of educators — psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, education students, and administrators — on the topic of “Mathematical Game Theory as Applied to Physician Education.” He spoke for an hour and took another half hour of questions. According to feedback forms distributed after the lecture, the talk was very well received. “Excellent presentation, enjoyed listening,” commented one. “Has warm manner,” added another. “Good flow, seems enthusiastic.” Not everyone was so positive, though. “Too intellectual a presentation,” complained one. “My orientation is more pragmatic.” Still, the majority of the responses were broadly favorable.
There was, however, a more serious problem. “Dr. Myron L. Fox” was actually an actor trained to give a speech consisting largely of “double talk, neologisms, non sequiturs, and contradictory statements … interspersed with parenthetical humor and meaningless references to unrelated topics.” The speech was actually an experiment conducted by a group of professors of medical education. They summarized the results by noting that “no respondents saw through the hoax of the lecture, [] all respondents had significantly more favorable than unfavorable responses, and [] one even believed he read Dr. Fox’s publications.”
“Given a sufficiently impressive lecture paradigm,” they concluded, “an experienced group of educators participating in a new learning situation can feel satisfied that they have learned despite irrelevant, conflicting, and meaningless content conveyed by the lecturer.”
Ajju Apr 24
The good ole authority effect. It is covered well, though from another perspective in Influence: Science and Practice by Robert Cialdini.
NEWTOON Aug 2
Excellent but it is not the first time that I see such a hoax :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_Affair
Jason Bobe Aug 20
For me lectures are the wrong medium for delivering many types of information. Lectures are an inefficient use of time, can make logic difficult to follow, and details often flutter by. This doesn’t mean that lectures should be jettisoned entirely, just yet at least. It might be interesting to look at what types of lectures (read what types of information) are suited to the lecture format.
The inefficiency of lectures are being removed from university settings by the practice of allowing virtual attendance via audio recordings. These audio files can be sped-up to a faster cadence, allowing students to listen to an hour long lecture in say 40 minutes.
This makes me wonder whether lectures will become optional in the university setting, especially lectures where information flows in one direction only (lecturer to audience).
Another interesting set of technologies that are starting to appear in classrooms, so I hear, are “student response systems”. I got to demo a set recently called iClicker (I’m not an academic, but I’m thinking about incorporating them into an upcoming talk). These technologies provide some interesting possibilities for transforming lectures, e.g. the lecturer would have the ability to instantly see if people understand the material (with multiple choice quiz, and a pie chart generated automatically). Or, I suppose, a lecture could be become a democratic “choose your own adventure-lecture”.
tommy aus australien Nov 16
Presentation outweights substance, it seems. Similarly, a nonsense paper of computer generated text, that included a stack of impressive jargon was accepted by the WMSCI a few years ago: http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2005/04/15/computer-gibberish-accepted-by-boffins