A teacher drones to a crowded lecture hall as he points at a PowerPoint about a topic students are already struggling to remember. Eyes are glazing over, heads are dropping onto desks and snores echo from the back of the room. Sadly, this scene more resembles a massive slumber party than the average classroom, and the student’s listlessness has nothing to do with too much partying—it’s caused by static teaching methods.
The most common way of teaching is in the form of lecture, which only has a five percent retention rate, according to National Training Laboratory’s Learning Pyramid.
Students like Regina Donizetti are beginning to realize the effects lectures have on learning.
“Most of my classes are lectures. I think that is the worst way to try to teach students,” Regina Donizetti, a freshman communications major, says. “Even the very best students find it so easy to have their attention averted on something besides the teacher or material.”
The National Training Laboratory’s Learning Pyramid also says that the most effective way of learning is experiencing, or teaching others, which has a 90 percent retention rate.
Sociologists have also taken a look inside the learning pyramid.
“Picture the game Barrel Full of Monkeys,” sociology professor Deborah Thorne says. “Students need to be able to connect past experiences to new ones, like hooking monkeys together in order to build understanding, not just being lectured to.”
A lecture style of teaching could be the direct result of current focuses in the Board of Education and Law.
“Schools, especially colleges, have become an institution that focuses on money and income, not actual learning,” Thorne says. “They are turning their backs on the objective of education.”
At one time there was hope for change in the learning experience for students attending Ohio University. Professors were holding strategy seminars and beginning to implement a new style of teaching before decreasing state funds and staff left workshops in the dust. As a result students’ and teachers’ aspirations for a livelier classroom have dwindled.
Although this has occurred, not all college staffs are pleased with the college’s “business plans.”
“This just reflects the structure and current state legislation. There is very little respect for higher education anymore,” Thorne says.
For now, there are ways for students to partake in interactive learning, including making study groups, hiring tutors or just spending more money for extra help. |
