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Lecture Bottleneck, getting rid of it !

by admin

THE LECTURE IS THE PROBLEM

A bottleneck is defined as a point of congestion that leads to inefficient production and an increase in associated costs. For years, traditional model of teaching was largely ineffective because lectures was a major bottleneck in the production of student learning.

Let’s first address the inefficiency of a lecture. The lecture is a bottleneck for several reasons:

  • One size does not fit all in learning.
  • There’s no replay, rewind, or fast-forward button in a lecture.
  • A large group of students are all dependent on one teacher to access learning.

A basic principle of good teaching:

  • It is to  recognize that each student is truly unique
  • Students learn content in a variety of ways at sometimes vastly different paces.

When class begins in a traditional classroom, these highly diverse students are frozen.

Students ready to move forward must patiently wait for the teacher to deliver the content, even though they may not need it. Meanwhile, students with skill deficiencies and truancy issues must compliantly listen to a lecture that does not address their needs as they wait to inform the teacher that nothing made sense.

Doing away with lectures ,  means that students can work at their own pace while teachers differentiate instruction.

When we start to teach,  we generally follow the common “I do, we do, you do” pedagogical formula to stay afloat. Each day I used a simple framework:

  • Opening: Get everyone’s attention
  • Direct instruction: Deliver a 10–20 minute lecture to the whole group
  • Guided practice: Work through a problem as a whole group
  • Independent practice: Give the students an assignment to work on individually
  • Closing: Administer an exit ticket to assess learning

We work by putting our 100% to make sure the class would operate flawlessly. But we always stumble at the same point in the process: the lecture. We dread the beginning of every class period. Once the lecture began, it quickly became clear that the teacher was only talking to a small percentage of the students.

THE ADVANTAGES OF BLENDED LEARNING

Once the lecture bottleneck is removed, teachers have the opportunity to rethink many of the other rigid constraints that have defined most instructional delivery models.

  1. Without this bottleneck, teachers can facilitate classrooms where students pace themselves, where they have to show mastery in order to progress, and where discussions between the teacher and an individual student are targeted and data driven, based on that student’s needs and capabilities.
  2. In lecture-free classrooms, students no longer need to work at a predetermined pace that has been established without regard for their unique needs.
  3. Moreover, lessons don’t need to be chunked to fit arbitrary scheduling demands that require each lesson to be the same length. Instead, teachers can facilitate a self-paced environment where students are always appropriately challenged and teachers differentiate for all students.

The result is a data-driven and student-centered classroom that honors the importance of personalizing learning to meet the unique needs of each student. After restructuring my classroom, I saw major shifts in student learning and self-efficacy. Not only were students mastering more skills than before, but they were able to reflect on their journey through the learning process.

More importantly, there was a noticeable decrease in anxiety and increase in confidence. Students were no longer stressed about coming to class because they knew they were going to pick up where they left off and were confident they would be given the time they needed to truly internalize the content.

Keep Shining !


Also published on Medium.

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