Lecture 2.0
Is the lecture dead? (On the evolution of Lecture 2.0)
The lecture
is dead.
The death of Lecture 1.0 is giving birth to Lecture 2.0...
I contend that the lecture, as we know it, is dead. 'Dead' in so much that the old lecture has passed its hey-day as a major tool of cultural innovation and that there are better pedagogical options.
I further contend that the observed symptomatology of declining lecture attendance can be explained as indicating that we are on the cusp of a cultural, pedagogical, and technological transition from Lecture 1.0 to Lecture 2.0.
The old lecture (Lecture 1.0) is currently prevalent in universities, but I envisage its radical demise. Clearly, all is not well with the old lecture. It's propped up by institutional habit and fear of the new, but starved of the lifeblood of willing students and scalability. The last vestige of defense for the old lectures comes from the incumbent, pre-internet Baby Boomers. However, even they are expressing alarm that the vital signs for the old lecture are blipping into the red zone. The old lecture is looking increasingly tired and emancipated. Its pedagogical prognosis is poor.
Meanwhile, the new meta-lecture (or networked lecture or Lecture 2.0) is surging and proliferating. It's time to turn our energies from propping up the old lecture and move into facilitating and exploring the evolution of a new, more adaptable species.
Students aren't turning up to old, closed-wall university lectures any more except under coercion. Lecturers and universities aren't innovating fast enough to keep pace with, let alone lead, cultural evolution. The old lecture looks like becoming an increasingly isolated, skeletal, endangered life form, and will eventually more or less die out.
The meta-lecture encompasses the kernel of the old lecture, but does so in a socially networked, recorded, interactive, public, multimedia stream. The meta-lecture is characterised by flexibility, accessibility, multiplicity, and interactivity, e.g.,
- Transcripts, slides, audio, and video are streamed and downloadable via an interactive, public archive, e.g.,.
- Hyperlinked transcripts (e.g,. wikieducator)
- Presentation slides are downloadable and displayable online, with each slide individually referenceable and reusable under a public domain or creative commons license (e.g., Slideshare). Each slide can be linked to and commented upon, with accompanying audio playable.
- Speech-to-text tools can be used to create lecture transcripts. Furthermore, auto-translation and text-to-speech tools can make the lecture automatically available in all languages.
- Hyperlinked transcripts (e.g,. wikieducator
- Internet collaboration tools are used to facilitate interactive, ongoing conversation and knowledge development based around lecture material's multiple formats (e.g., teachertube). Thus the intellectual capital is maximally invested by dynamically contributing to global knowledge networking.
- Students record responses to lecture material via comments and links to other information and their audio, writing, etc.
The new lecture is more about evolution than revolution. The new lecture is more flexible and dynamic. It occurs in smaller chunks, its recorded and transmitted in digital form, its hyperlinked, it uses multimedia, it invites conversation and critique, its ongoing, and its free and open. The old lecture, in comparison, comes down a single, non-interactive channel. Say goodbye to the mono-lecture and help create meta-lectures.
See also
Comments ( Hide | Add Comment )
Anonymous says:Nov 08, 2007 19:18 ( Permalink | ) |
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Andrew Read says:The refusal to allow the old lecture to die is not just a psychological phenomenon. It is also architectural and business based. Universities have an investment in lecture theatres and there is a need to justify that investment by using them. The architecture creates the pedagogy. Universities have a business model that involves face-to-face teaching incorporating lectures. They are able to make sufficient money from this model to fund their other operations such as research. They do not have a business model which will allow them to make money from 2.0 pedagogies. They do have an alternative business model excluding lectures which is used for distance education. This model is also not adapted to 2.0 pedagogies. Until universities find a business model and an architecture to support alternative pedagogies, we are locked into the outmoded lecture model and its distance education equivalents. Whether universities survive by clinging to their antiquated pedagogies remains to be seen. There is a potential for an entirely new form of knowledge creation to supplant their traditional role. But overcoming an institutional structure that has evolved over a millennium will be difficult. Slowly evolving universities may survive despite their ponderous evolution. I am reminded of Douglas Adams' description of Vogons in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "when the first primeval Vogons crawled out of the sea, the forces of evolution were so disgusted with them that they never allowed them to evolve again. Through sheer stubbornness, though, the Vogons survived, wrecked the planet, and emigrated en masse to the Megabrantis cluster, where they form most of the Galactic bureaucracy" |
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s650786 says:I don't like the coining of the phrase "2.0" because it implies an exclusive change of state (can't tell I am a computer person can you?). Anything that has grown through evolution will assimilate changes progressively, not go from version 1.0 to version 2.0. Even to imply that you could go from version 1.8 to version 1.9.7.2 implies some kind of linearity which just does not exist with such multi-threaded organisms such as university education methods or the interweb. Based on my experience with technology, I think there is about as much chance of supplanting lecture theatre scenarios with online lectures (and associated electronic pedagogical assets), as there is in supplanting face-to-face interpersonal relationships with facebook - because a "real live" lecture is essentially a face-to-face interpersonal relationship. The EVOLUTIONARY process is more likely to progressively add layers of electronic pedagogical assistance which will also be progressive in it's uptake by not only it's publishers (the lecturers), but also it's consumers (the students). |
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s650786 says:Nice piece of writing, something I plan on doing something about here at UC (if given a mandate) |
Anonymous says:I think that we are forgetting that there is still a lot of life in the lecture yet. It is not just the lecturers who cling to lectures. In survey after survey the students like them and demand them. Probably because they are a way of getting the notes from the lecturers to the students without going through the brains of either. Or maybe because students are more than ever focused on assessments and exams and the lecture usually either only covers what is needed or makes explicit what is and what is not needed. There will be new forms that evolve, but they will supplement not replace the historic form of lecture. If you dont believe that, consider how many lectures you have been to (eg at conferences) that talk about the death of the lecture and the need for more effective forms of pedagogy. |
Hi,
Nice piece of writing.
Something I wholeheartedly agree with.
Alex Hayes