Active Learning

Last night we had our college orientation for Part-Time Faculty (our newest incarnation, although I still prefer "Adjunct Faculty." There's no part-time anything about my job, except the pay). It was on Active Learning.

To drive the point home immediately, the presenter turned on his Powerpoint slideshow.

It could have been this slide, but it wasn't. Right there, we have a dichotomy: do we lecture in a "non-active" approach (static podium approach with lecture, Powerpoint) to get the idea of "active" learning (aka, Ditch the Lecturing) across? I focused on the free sandwiches with the crunchy bean sprouts while he went through a few more slides.

It was getting worse. I remembered the class where I had the students read Edward Tufte's thoughts (no, actually, it's a diatribe) against Powerpoint, and contrasted it with David Byrne's views (he's the lead singer in the Talking Heads).

In it, Tufte makes the point that most Powerpoint charts are "chartjunk" (nice example above from the web) and that content per slide is very low. (Do a search for Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in slideware.) What Powerpoint (or other slideware) is good for is managing slides, that it to say images, etc. I see it used in its best way when I go with Dave to his scientific conferences. Content per slide is extremely high and the best presenters rarely read their slides, but instead reference them. My sister uses slideware in teaching her history classes, where the presentation of images would be a natural fit.

David Byrne used the slideware as a new method of digital art, and made his statements as if it were a series of visual images.

But English 101? A lecture on Active Learning? When the presenter begins slideware show, it sends a message to the listeners that there is a path through this material, thought out beforehand and there will be minimal deviation from this path, Thank You For Listening.


Where I was supposed to be internalizing something like the chart above (Convert! Convert!), the whole evening felt like this:

. . . a bunch of carefully prepared slides that I had to wade through,
figure out, in order to get to the end.

So like a good girl,

I ate my cookie, tried not to think about anything.