Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Charisma of lecturers doesn't affect learning much

This article is about college education and not giftedness per se, but I think it is interesting and that there is not enough assessment of how much college students are learning.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/...ts-dont-learn-more-charismatic-lecturers
Charisma Doesn't Count
May 30, 2013
By Chris Parr for Times Higher Education


The paper is at http://sites.williams.edu/nk2/files/2011/08/Carpenter.Wilford.Kornell.Mullaney.inpress1.pdf . The authors say their findings are consistent with previous research:

It's quite possible that the entire lecture system is not a good way to learn.

If one keeps you awake/alert and the other causes you to zone out or fall asleep, that's got to count for something.

Lecture system is outdated. I think, in time, we'll be seeing a lot more portfolio and project-learning - partly to increase actual learning and minimize rote learning, cheating, and external motivation/rewards (e.g. grades) which jeopardize learning.

I'm not saying that they're aren't charismatic and dynamic instructors in secondary or higher ed who are able to captivate students and get them to actually learn because they do exist. I student taught with a nationally-recognized high school history teacher who was featured on a PBS documentary series. However, for every charismatic and dynamic instructor like him how many duds or uninspiring instructors are there? Usually too many.

The problem with learning is not one of the delivery or presentation or content/material. The real problem with learning rests with motivation. Most effective learning arises when we are internally motivated. And despite the evidence to support this argument, external motivation (external grades/rewards/punishments) remains the primary method of learning in primary, secondary, and higher education.

Is is possible for a dynamic and charismatic instructor to foster internal motivation or self-motivation? Yes. I saw this happen with my mentor who was featured on the PBS documentary. He had very high expectations and did not settle for second best, period. Many students were scared of him and couldn't hack it.

Still, his way of teaching only worked to a point. The students had to come half-way and be willing to go on the journey to learning with him. They had to have a spark or an eagerness to learn if you like. Without it, the mentor said it was a bit pointless and spinning the wheels. He told me that he usually cherry picked a few kids in each class (usually the ones from broken homes, on welfare, lived in the projects, etc. - yet were bright enough to succeed) who could pull themselves up from their bootstraps and get switched on through learning.

Students have to feel in control or have some autonomy over their learning. If not, they're not going to be motivated no matter what. This is a major stumbling block with formal instruction today at all levels where kids have no choice over the content or subject that they learn or the format it is delivered in.

Students learn internally. Period.

The teacher has actually not always got much to do with that process. MOST students learn best through human contact and immersion with the material, but the particular form also has to be a good match for their preferred learning style.

My experience is that cdfox's teacher is absolutely right.

My DH and I have always had a saying that perfectly encapsulates this.

There are two types of students in higher ed. Those who want to learn FROM you, and those that want you to learn it TO them.

The latter group demands entertainment, but it's kind of pointless since they aren't motivated to engage with the material either way. If you actually do the things that set them up for learning (very high expectations, many opportunities via formative assessment practices and fostering learning community among peers), they bitterly complain about the amount of work that it all is.

While it is true that autonomous learning produces the BEST results... a particular course of study is still a useful thing. Would you really want a physician who has "designed her own" med school program? No? Neither would I. I would also hope that she'd have been sufficiently mature to generate her OWN enthusiasm for whatever coursework she was taking, quite frankly.

Very few college courses outside of one's major (and related disciplines) are "requirements" at the post-secondary level. You do get to choose WHICH general education courses to take to meet those requirements.

From the point of view of a faculty member, though, what those studies suggest is that student evaluations are worthless, for the most part. Something which teachers/faculty have always known. The students are too close to the situation to really provide valid feedback. ALUMNI, on the other hand, are often a great source of constructive criticism.

Three types of students.

The third is there for the Patent of Minor Nobility and actual learning is irrelevant.

Ahhhh, yes. The seeker of the elusive M-R-S degree. Now accompanied apparently by the seeker of the M-R-D-R degree as women succeed in the professions and become family breadwinners.

I read the paper. My impression was that it was a poorly designed study and wasn't measuring what they claimed it did. Rather than testing the quality of a good lecturer, I think they just gave the students a subsection of an IQ test.

The students sat at a computer individually and listened to a video for 65 seconds. It was about why calico cats are almost always female. Half the students listened to a good speaker, half to a not-so-good speaker. Content was the same.

Then they rated the speaker. After that, they answered 30 trivia questions as a distraction. Finally, they were given 5 minutes to write down everything they could remember about the topic. Surprise, surprise: performance didn't differ between the two groups. In a second experiment, they let people review the transcript and still got the same results (seems this particular outcome would be expected).

IMO, given that the content of the talks was the same, they were pretty much testing memory and have proven what has been proven umpteen times: the overall performance of two groups of people selected at random will be the same.

It seems to me that they missed an obvious and very important point, which is the content of the lecture. IMO, they should have compared FOUR lectures: one that flowed and made sense and one that was poorly conceived, both delivered by the two different speakers. But even so, there is still a large element of IQ testing there.

So what they really should have done was use students with the same IQs or with the same scores on digit span or another test that approximates ability for the task they were asked to do.

Okay, enough said. Personally, I'm not impressed with the design of this study.

No, I was more thinking of the undergrad degree being a ticket to law school and then law school being a ticket to a $160,000 a year legal position.

Thanks Val. I wasn't impressed with this study either, but you could describe the flaws with the study better than I could.

Howler Karma - yes, about doctors. We, as consumers, expect a certain level of competency. But we also expect doctors to think outside-of-the-box and get creative if they lack the knowledge with a certain diagnosis or problem. There is a certain level of content knowledge with doctors, but I'd have to say they also need a certain level of confidence and creativity to go beyond the standard course of treatment, for instance. They've got to be able to question the status quo, though many are hesitant to do so out of fear of a lawsuit.

Really, I think they could do the same study with babies/toddlers and those in a structured kindergarten class who are told where to sit and when, given numerous worksheets, and only 15 minutes for lunch. No IQ testing needed for these results.

Somehow we think that there's some mystical way to learn that differs when we get older. Um, no. It's just some people get used to taking a rather passive and disengaged role with their learning in formal settings (e.g. they become like sheep or followers). Take them outside of it, let them talk about their interests, and the situation often changes dramatically.

Colleges and universities (or primary/secondary ed leaders) do not want to recognize the inherent problems with the educational system and formal learning as it stands today. It still rests with motivation. You have to be motivated to sit, listen, and pay attention to a lecture whether it is on a computer or not. You have to see that there is inherent meaning in the lecture. Those are BIG problems for most college students today. They see lectures as being pointless so why bother to sit through them and waste your energy.

Stephen Hawking, apparently, wasn't overly motivated to study or be academically inclined at times. It wasn't because he couldn't learn the material. He wasn't self-motivated to do so. He was an underachiever, for periods, instead.

The current educational system from primary through to higher education is unsustainable, in my opinion, until we address the fundamental principle of internal motivation or self-motivation.

Even with primary education, teachers think they can better motivate kids to basic math facts with digital technology. But too often, the kids are simply being directed by the software program and, again, become passive in their learning and not actually in control of their learning. Worse, the software program is often based on a series of built-in external motivations (rewards/punishments) for using or playing the software program.