Listen up

Posted by: ashleytan on: February 23, 2012

• In: Uncategorized
• Comment!

  by  d-q 

Recently I read what initially seemed like two contrasting articles:

• A Tech-Happy Professor Reboots After Hearing His Teaching Advice Isn’t Working
• Don’t Lecture Me: Rethinking How College Students Learn

The first article by The Chronicle seemed to paint Michael Wesch, edu Web 2.0 guru and creator of this now famous YouTube video, as backtracking on a more distributed and learner-centred form of instruction because Wesch learnt a thing or two from a colleague who was an accomplished “lecturer”.

The second article by Mind/Shift, said quite the opposite: Don’t lecture students.

I think both are sides of the same coin. It is not about putting the technology first; it is about the pedagogy. It is about making connections with people and content. It is about the passion for teaching and expressing the love for learning. It is about putting instructional strategies before technological know-how.

But there is something even more important than pedagogy and that is understanding how people learn and leveraging on that. If they learn in the presence of a more informed other, how does the latter reach for the former? There are also circumstances when we learn without a teacher. How do we learn then and how do instructors create the same circumstances to promote that kind of learning?

To use the examples on both articles, most lectures do not work because the lecturer is talking to an audience (who might not be listening) or talking down to it. On the other hand, a few lectures work because they are storytelling sessions, sales pitches, or talking-withs. To talk with someone requires the talker to listen first, to understand where the listener is at, and to relate to the difficulties s/he is having.

This is brain science (and some of my colleagues will call it the learning sciences). It is not rocket science. It is about listening first, not talking first. If you listen hard enough, your learners will tell you how best they learn. And today, those means are mediated or enabled by technology.

Tags: listening, pedagogy, teaching