Harvard Plans Major Experiments In Improving Student Learning

One of the least effective ways to teach is to stand in an auditorium and deliver a monologue on facts, as Mazur did in explaining the motion of atoms. In other words: Lectures, the dominant mode of instruction in classrooms, just do not work, no matter how smart your students are. The group had convened in Harvard’s Northwest Science Building for a one-day symposium on learning and teaching, the first salvo in a $40 million attempt by Harvard to rethink education. The initiative’s proximate goal is to make Harvard’s teachers better, but the ultimate goal is much more ambitious: to improve education beyond Harvard Yard, perhaps in ways that cannot yet be foreseen. Read more at:
http://articles.boston.com/2012-02-06/news/31031164_1_harvard-yard-answer-professors

Comments

[Walt Lessun]

Hmmm. Lectures worked to educate me. Of course, that was back in the day when US Higher Education was the best in the world...