Monday, February 13, 2012

Link: New interactive teaching techniques

Excellent article on "active learning" from Harvard Magazine. As I discussed in a previous post, it is hard to justify the traditional lecture-style of education that has been dominant for so long. This article discusses the advantages to having students participate in the learning and teaching of the material. This is similar to the traditional "chavrusa" style that is common in Jewish Yeshivot.

“The person who learns the most in any classroom,” Mazur declares, “is the teacher.”

Compare the above quote from the article with this one from a Talmudic sage:
הרבה למדתי מרבותי ומחבירי יותר מרבותי ומתלמידי יותר מכולן
I learned much from my teachers, but more from my friends, and more than both from my students

Eric Mazur on new interactive teaching techniques
(via TorahMusings.com)

PS:
Stay tuned for the next article on technology and education...

 

 

2 comments:

  1. The commentators on that passage explain that he learnt tho most from his students because by preparing for a lecture he forced himself to have perfectly clear explanations for his students. That would support the exact opposite conclusion of the article.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That’s probably not the simplest explanation of it, but even according to that, the main point is still that teaching something to another person helps one understand it better, so students should be involved in the process. The goal of college is not to get the professor to understand things better.

    ReplyDelete