Thursday, November 20, 2008

News I Can Use

I went to a "webinar" today, a web-based "seminar" supposedly to help faculty teach more effectively.

There's something deeply wrong with watching a web-cast talking head going on and on about how one shouldn't lecture, but should give people active learning tasks. Do these people even think about what they're saying?

And did you know, there is more than one way to put students in groups?

I left, but not quickly enough. :(

What sort of weirded me out was the number of folks there from various academic skills/advising areas on campus who were taking serious notes, notes they'll be happy to lecture on in teaching development programs on campus, while they tell us not to ever, ever lecture at our students.

3 comments:

  1. Been there! Where do these people get the idea that lecturing via videofeed is somehow better than lecturing face-to-face? Same old wine in new wineskins.

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  2. Anonymous12:50 PM

    Sigh. And some of my colleagues have the nerve to say that *I* am not qualified for my job because I do not have a background in Higher Education. But I never would effing DREAM of offering a webinar for this!

    Do me a favor, Bardiac, and please write a nice email to whoever made the decision to put this stupid event on. Part of the problem is that all campuses that I know of have fallen in love with academic technology...forgetting that good new sexy tools mis-used are worse than good old dull tools used well.

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  3. What words of wisdom you got from the webinar! They'll be telling us next that students should feel empowered by their learning :).

    Seriously, if they want to do the technology thing, they should do it up right: put it into a podcast where you can speed up the speaker's voice and waste less time.

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