The Boston Globe had the following article (copied here in part to remove the excess school spirit) written by a former Harvard University President titled “Harvard can provide educational leadership.”
TWO GREAT problems currently beset American higher education. First, while the percentage of high school seniors enrolling in college has increased over the last 30 years, the percentage who graduate has not, stunting the opportunities of many young people and depriving the economy of skills it needs in order to prosper. Second, most students graduate having made only modest progress in fundamental competencies, such as critical thinking, perhaps because they are spending 40 percent less time studying than their predecessors several decades ago.
… But Harvard has a great opportunity to lead in reforming undergraduate education to engage students more fully and help them develop to the full extent of their abilities. Three improvements are needed:
â– Faculty members should lecture less and experiment with new, more active methods of instruction.
â– The faculty should participate in developing reliable methods of assessing student progress to determine which forms of instruction are most effective in helping students learn.
â– Departments need to help restructure graduate education to acquaint future faculty with what is becoming known about how students learn, what methods of instruction are most successful, and how technology can be used to engage student interest and help them progress.
Already, universities are starting to introduce such reforms. Lecturing is gradually giving way to more active methods of teaching. Computers are beginning to be used not just to facilitate communication between students and faculty but to improve learning. A few departments are experimenting with new ways to prepare graduate students better for their role as teachers.
But major universities have not played a prominent part in these efforts. They feel little pressure to do so, since they attract far more students than they can accommodate. Yet their participation is critical, since their example has such a powerful effect on hundreds of other colleges.
…
While there is plenty of school pep in there, this article clearly summarizes key issues. First, the college/university system is not doing as well as it should. Second, there are plenty of tested, successful ideas on how to improve education. Third, there is minimal incentive for colleges/universities to change.
The article is targeted toward major universities with large student enrollments, but I don’t think the message is any less important for smaller colleges. It isn’t enough to just have a smaller student to teacher ratio if you are just going to stand at the chalk board and lecture. Every course should decide if there is a way to leverage technology to make the students time with the “expert” as valuable as possible.