Thursday, September 24, 2009

Value-Adding Lectures

Lecturers contribute a bare minimum if all they do is repeat what's in the text or the slides. The situation is worse if you have a group of students (as I believe I do) who are independent learners and can absorb all the basic references without much help.

What, then, ought lecturers do to add value? Here are some ideas, by no means exhaustive:

  • Give a fresh slant to what's in the textbooks - either give a new perspective or just challenge everything the writer says


  • Lecture on a related sub-topic (one not in the generic handouts)


  • Facilitate a discussion or a case-study (thus taking the class away from recall-mode to application-mode)


  • Get the students to present


  • Show a video


  • Facilitate a project which takes them out of the classroom (kinda like a case-study on steroids)


  • What else?

Adding value nowadays usually involves creating new value. Whatever this is, it's probably not repeating what's already available.

3 comments:

Alex Tang said...

could do we away with lecture altogether?

alwyn said...

we probably should, but i guess must walk b4 run :)

jeff said...

It would be interesting to give new values like that if the syllabus permits it...