Most of us remember the old days of school lectures, attending class after class of teachers mostly talking and lecturing about different topics. At the end, there may be a quiz or an assignment from reading materials plus what was spoken during class. But did we really learn or listen very closely to what was spoken during those lectures?
Holding Children’s Attention
Today’s educators are realizing how unproductive these lessons can be for most children, as who has the mental capacity or the will to sit still and listen to people talk all day? Children’s attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, and with instant access to any known information in a number of visual medias, hearing a teacher talking about subjects can become boring over time. The way that most people, young and old, learn best is through a mixed variety of media and teaching techniques, ideally catered to each individual’s learning style. Learning styles can vary, but even breaking it down to whether you’re a visual or audio learner can make a huge impact. If most students are visual learners, then listening to someone talk isn’t going to be conducive to them learning and retaining any given information, even if it is interesting to the child.
Teaching Is Getting a Facelift
Being able to reach children on a variety of platforms is like a revival of teaching for a lot of educators. Resources are limited for some schools, of course, but being able to use video, audio, music, short clips, hands-on examples and other materials creates a whole new world for students. They can more easily engage in the material being taught, and even form connections between what is being taught to them and how it applies to their real world lives. Educators want to put their best teaching foot forward, and the answer is mixed media learning with more hands-on interaction. Lecturing based learning doesn’t really grasp people’s attention, and can be harder to retain. For the most part, most schools and teachers have been breaking away from lectures for years now, introducing more teaching varieties into the classroom and perfecting their skills.
A New Age of Teaching
With each passing school year, lectures are dwindling and will continue in this trend at a higher pace. It may not be that far into the future before children are asking us what lecture based learning was!
Katie Kyzivat