What colleges should teach - Essay Example

What Colleges Should Teach The issue of what colleges should teach has featured prominently in debates within academic circles in recent years due to concerns that colleges are churning out graduates who are merely book-smart and nothing else. Numerous leading academic figures have made contributions to this debate. The article Designing Colleges for More Than Just Creativity by Maddy Burke-Vigeland focuses on the need to make colleges more interactive places for learning rather than just rigid, highly wired places for information dissemination. Burke-Vigeland concluded that the current fixed forward step-sitting arrangement of lecture halls is unsuitable for interactive learning as it prevents students from expressing their individuality. He advocates for a flexible classroom which allows professors and students to restructure the classroom to allow team discussions, reversible writing on the walls, incorporation of technology that enables communication with other students around the world, and adaptation of the room for different course work (Burke-Vigeland, n. p.). In the article, What Should Colleges Teach? Stanley Fish raises concern regarding a recent trend whereby college courses are increasingly diverting from their main discipline of focus into other unrelated disciplines. He focuses on the discipline which he teaches, literature, and points out an observation he made whereby writing courses in colleges nowadays tend to focus on analysis of various social issues such as globalization, racism, and sexism instead of focusing on writing. As a result, few students taking writing courses in college are able to write a clean English sentence. The author asserts that writing courses should focus exclusively on writing and teach nothing other than grammar and rhetoric (Fish, n. p.). In the article, Rethinking the Way College Students are Taught, Emily Hanford asserts that the traditional method of teaching in colleges whereby students learn through non-interactive lectures is no longer effective since most students are not able to absorb most of the information that is usually disseminated in a single lecture. The author advocates for the peer-instruction method of teaching in colleges and provides proof of its effectiveness by referring to the success of a number of professors who use this method to teach their students. These include Joe Redish, a physics professor at the University of Maryland, Brian Lukoff, a researcher in education at Harvard University, and Eric Mazur, a professor of physics at Harvard University (Hanford, n. p.). In Rethinking the Way Colleges Teach Critical Thinking, Scott Johnson laments the way through which colleges teach critical thinking. He asserts that current practices whereby students are taught through lectures to memorize information is not achieving one of its aims of developing student critical thinking skills. He uses his specialty discipline of instruction, Earth Science, as an example to demonstrate how students can be taught facts while simultaneously gaining crucial critical thinking skills. Johnson asserts that the best way to achieve this purpose is to dedicate a significant portion of the course teaching students how the factual information of the course was gathered through logical and critical evaluation of available information (Johnson, n. p.). In the article, Colleges Should Teach Intellectual Virtues, Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe underline the importance of helping college students develop intellectual virtues in addition to the traditional roles of teaching them the skills of their discipline, literacy skills, and critical thinking. The authors assert that colleges should help students develop intellectual virtues so as to mold them into all-rounded human beings (Schwartz and Sharpe, n. p.). From the five articles analyzed, it is evident that the education students acquire in colleges does not completely suit their needs and requirements for both professional and personal development. Technology and globalization have transformed the college learning environment into a dynamic setting that changes rapidly in accordance with rapidly advancing information and communication technology and increasing cultural diversity. Consequently, rigid college teaching methods should be restructured and made flexible so that they may be easily adaptable to the learning needs of all types of students in colleges. In order to achieve this aim, college instructors should teach their students techniques of digging up information for themselves from secondary sources instead of giving them already-prepared material through lectures. Instructors should teach students only thirty percent of the course and assign them the task of researching the remaining seventy percent for themselves. This method will enable students to acquire valuable researching skills in addition to acquiring a better understanding of the course material. Instructors should give students a couple of valuable researching tips before setting them on the task of researching the course material. These should include locating relevant material for the topics to be covered, ascertaining the reliability and validity of this material, and extracting only relevant information from a wide array of sources. Students will be more motivated to read material acquired through their own efforts than that provided by the lecturer. However, the lecturer should ask students to submit their research results for him to go through it and ascertain its reliability and relevance. He should then point out mistakes to students who did not meet the course requirements and advice them on appropriate way forward. In Rethinking the Way Colleges Teach Critical Thinking, Scott Johnson stresses the importance of teaching students how the course material was gathered through critical evaluation of course content and logical analysis. His research confirms the efficacy of teaching students information-gathering methods instead of just giving them already-gathered information to study (Johnson, n.p.). Secondly, instructors can achieve the aim of adapting the teaching process to student needs by allocating cooperative group assignments. Cooperative learning tasks with clear performance measures and goals facilitate increased high-level reasoning, increased generation of new solutions and ideas, and transfer of learning concepts and skills from one situation to another. In addition, cooperative group assignments foster positive interdependence which prepares students for future job group tasks and positive interaction with working colleagues. Cooperative group assignments also foster the development of social skills which help students to develop positive relationships in the society. Such positive relationships are crucial for facilitating interactive learning in colleges, since not all students have the motivation to engage in participatory lecture sessions. In his article titled What Does College Teach?, Richard Hersh outlines the benefits of student involvement in the teaching process. Hersh asserts that students taught by instructors who are keen to involve their students in the teaching process develop advanced problem-solving skills in addition to portraying a much greater understanding of the course material than those who do not engage in cooperative group learning (Hersh, n.p.). Finally, college instructors can successfully adapt the teaching process to student learning needs by fostering learner self-responsibility. They can achieve this by allowing students to plan and conduct evaluation of much of their learning. College instructors should allow learners to take an active role in a portion of the course by encouraging them to formulate their own learning goals, identify material and human resources they require to fulfill these learning goals, select appropriate strategies, and evaluate learning outcomes. This practice will contribute towards motivating learners since they will be committed to a decision they participated in making. According to Maddy Burke-Vigeland in his article, Designing Colleges for More than Just Creativity, facilitation of learner autonomy leads to the development of positive attitudes for learning and motivation of learners (Burke-Vigeland, n.p.). Despite the numerous benefits that students stand to gain through cooperative learning, several leading figures have raised criticisms against it. The main argument against cooperative learning is that there is a huge potential for abuse and misuse of cooperative learning as an educational provision, especially for academically talented students. There is a strong belief among some education scholars that this population of students ends up losing motivation for learning due to subjection to a teaching process that is not suitable for their learning needs. This argument has no basis since some studies have proven that academically talented students also benefit tremendously from cooperative learning. Cooperative learning enables them to interact with students weaker than them and assist them to understand the material which they might not have understood in class. This provides a boost to their confidence and self-esteem, consequently, translating to motivation for learning (Hanford, n.p.) Conclusion Evidently, participatory, interactive and cooperative learning provides greater learning outcomes among college students than purely lecturing teaching practices. The traditional lecture does not allow for sufficient student participation. As a result, students fail to acquire motivation for learning. Cooperative and participatory learning stimulates student motivation by allowing them a stake in the learning process and promoting the expression of their individuality. Therefore, this flexible learning practice enables college instructors to adapt their teaching methods to suit the learning needs of each of their students. Works Cited Burk-Vigelaind, Maddy. “Designing Colleges for More than Just Connectivity” Scientific American, 2013. Web. 31 Mar 2013. Fish, Stanley. “What Should College Teach?” The New York Times, 2009. Web. 31 Mar 2013. Hanford, Emily. Rethinking the Way College Students are Taught. American Public Media. 2013. Web. 30 Mar 2013. Hersh, Richard H.  “What Does College Teach?” The Atlantic. 2005. Web. 9 Apr 2013. < http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/11/what-does-college-teach/304306/> Johnson, Scott K. Re-thinking the Way Colleges Teach Critical Thinking. Yahoo News. Scientific American, 2012. Web. 30 Mar 2013. Schwartz, Barry and Kenneth Sharpe. “Colleges Should Teach Intellectual Virtues.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. Commentary. 2012. Web. 31 Mar 2013. Read More