Re: lecturing; formal discourse

Jay Lemke (JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU)
Sun, 31 Mar 96 23:40:03 EST

For what it's worth, of course I'd prefer the live great lecturer,
if I was close enough to get some sense of interactional synchrony,
some personalization, however diluted, some feel of the infra-semiotic
rhythms of collective human Being which is the carrier wave on which
the lecture as such rides. But I haven't see/heard many such lectures,
and I'd sure prefer one on tape, or CD-ROM, or whatever to a boring
but live lecturer of the kind I've too often suffered through (and
not just as a student!).

As to the economics, my prediction is that the large lecture class
is going the way of the dodo in competition for student preferences
with on-line interactive prestige (diluted and commercialized, but
still very competitive) educational offerings. Education is a mass
market, concentrate capital to produce jazzy Name Brand offerings,
and recoup through very wide distribution. It could be Microsoft
vs Harvard Electronic University (extension division may be an
unneeded concept).

Of course there will be price-levels. Cultural capital is a
differentiated market, too. There will always be some cachet to
FTF, but only when it is small group, and very expensive. And
there will be tradition, and lectures will not entirely disappear
(though many in my view should). The talented lecturers will need
to practice on live audiences. But the multimedia live shows and
the canned, interactive media will probably converge in many
respects, and the latter will be far more flexible and integrate
more options. A lot more cheaply.

There are not enough good lecturers to sustain mass education,
and interactive media will be better and cheaper than poor
lecturers. On-line peer-group and mentor interactions will be
diminished substitutes for the small seminar (which will get
more expensive) or tutorial (already too expensive). People are
probably not going to give up the face-to-face subtleties of
social interaction for learning, but we will probably learn how
to make the most of less of it, and raise the quality and interest
of what replaces the worst of it.

I could be wrong, but I hope I'm not. I believe it's already
beginning in medical education (not a mass market), will be very
big in scientific and technical education at the more introductory
levels, and will gradually spread outward and downward to other
fields and lower agelevels. There is probably some optimum
niche for it (grade 11-14 is my guess), but when did a profitable
and convenient mode of activity ever confine itself to its
optimum niche?

JAY.

JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
BITNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM
INTERNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU