multimedia lectures

Eva Ekeblad (eva.ekeblad who-is-at ped.gu.se)
Sat, 30 Mar 1996 09:11:59 +0100

Phil asks:

>Has anybody actually experimentally demonstrated the widely
>asserted claim that live lectures are no better than textbooks
>or multimedia lectures or videotaped lectures? The truth of
>this claim is not at all obvious to me, and before putting a
>lot of ourselves and our colleagues out of work, we should at
>least test it.

There is one aspect that may be lost in the "canned" versions, and that is
the effect of the lecture as a means for "knowledge authorization." A
colleague of mine* has written an ethnographic dissertation describing the
education of science teachers. Lecturers using front-on teaching and a fast
flow of information were perceived as having provided valid knowledge (even
when students turned out not to be able to explain the concepts). Lecturers
trying to promote workforms where students enter the dialogue even in
large-group lectures tended to spend much less time "in front" -- and
naturally did not pour out a fast flow of information. They tended to be
perceived as less experienced and less knowledgeable (which was formally
NOT the case). And students tended to transform assignments in a
"transmissive" direction. There was much frustration on the side of
lecturers as well as of students. Now, the study was made in the years
following a teacher education reform, and "they say" that the student
population in later years has been more receptive to dialogic forms...

However, the point of bringing this into the discussion was the powerful
shaping of the orientation to the taught content accomplished through the
culturally available forms for transmissive lecturing. The lecture hall is
built to _capture_ attention, to orient all students physically in the same
direction and keep them there (well, there are naturally always forms of
resistance). And the fast flow of (multimedial) information shuts out
"everything irrelevant". Start arguing in your head or with your neighbour
and you are lost. If it's in the middle of a chain of formulas you may well
be lost for the rest of the lecture (I had a maths teacher like that...).
Things like these seem to confer the authority exercised over bodies and
minds (in culturally acceptable forms) on to the knowledge presented. "yes,
it must be good and true, and _eventually_ we will understand it."

The disciplining effect of note-taking may be something similar (it does
not only prevent cross-talk but, to my experience, also prevents the silent
private dialoguing with the "text").

"Canned" multimedia would seem to lose much of the capturing-power built
into the cultural forms of the lecture hall lecture. On the other hand they
may have other powers for capturing the attention. (screen hypnosis...) And
they may be shaped for more dialogic forms...

Hmm.. without connection to particulars I think I should stop here.

Eva

*Beach, Dennis. 1995. _Making sense of the problems of change: An
ethnographic study of a teacher education reform._ G=F6teborg: Acta
Universitatis Gothoburgensis.