Economic Alternative to Lecture-Based Education

¶ … Economic Alternative to Lecture-Based Education

Statement of the Problem and Purpose: American education has evolved tremendously between the original one-room schoolhouse of the 19th and early 20th century to it modern incarnation. Instead of combined classrooms for primary and secondary school students, the contemporary American public education system provides progressive, graduated, age-appropriate instruction through the final year of secondary education. The first generation of American students used a single textbook, often sharing it with another classmate. Even throughout most of the last century, students in every grade still used the exact same textbooks as preceding class and the texts themselves updated only after a decade or more of use; in many instances, it was not uncommon that students used the same textbooks as had their parents.

In numerous respects, American education has changed profoundly since then, with a wide variety of high quality up-to-date texts, integrated comprehensive graduated courses of instruction in myriad academic; cultural, practical, and vocational subjects; advanced diagnostic testing; computer technology; and in remedial programs to identify and address learning and behaviorally challenged students. Similarly, modern educators are generally well qualified, motivated, and educationally accomplished individuals dedicated to the welfare and intellectual development of their students. As a result, illiteracy rates in society have steadily decreased and the vast majority of the American population achieves a high school diploma.

Notwithstanding this tremendous progress, one crucial element of education has largely been ignored - indeed, completely unrecognized - despite its obvious significance, until recent research and experimental implementation (Gardner 1999) first suggested its importance. Namely, even modern education emphasizes a relatively narrow sliver of human intelligence and intellectual aptitude for learning. Specifically, education methods, materials, and instructional philosophies still focus on linguistic abilities and on quantitative logic (i.e. "reading, writing, and arithmetic") while all but ignoring at least five other know aspects of human intellectual capacity for learning (Gardner 1999) and alternate means of presenting subject matter to the same lecture- based methods of instruction introduced more than two centuries ago.

Experimental programs have demonstrated the tremendous untapped potential of providing academic content-based instruction in means other than through the traditional process of transmission of information from teacher to student by passive learning (Stanford 1993). The same holds true with respect to the use of one-dimensional educational materials, by virtue of the overwhelming predominance of textbook-only methods of academic instruction throughout much of the primary and secondary curriculum (Renwick 1999).

Whereas those traditional methods and materials are sufficient to meet the needs of those students whose relative learning capacity is conducive to academic achievement through natural linguistic and quantitative abilities, they are comparatively inadequate to allow many other students the same opportunity for educational success. Moreover, even aside from the variability and different components or "types" of human intellectual potential, individuals vary significantly - even those with aptitudes in similar areas - in the degree to which they can benefit from lecture-based, factual recall-oriented methods of instruction.

Certain subjects - the physical sciences, in particular - lend themselves quite naturally to innovative active learning through hands-on instructional methods and materials (Norman & Combs-Richardson 2001), but the evidence also suggests quite strongly that elements of active learning through physical experiences is more conducive to optimal subject matter retention in general, even in subjects whose only natural measure of learning is, necessarily, factual recall (Cookson 2005). In fact, the incorporation of modern forms of electronic media and interactive technology completely outside the realm of education throughout American society is so ubiquitous, that it provides a wellspring of purely anecdotal examples of the vast potential of non- traditional methods of academic instruction.

To take only one relatively common example, every student who exhibits a very early and/or a strong interest in computer technology or gadgetry or who excels only in isolated academic areas while performing substantially below "expectations" in others represents a lost opportunity. In that regard, Gardner (1999) developed the Multiple Intelligences theory, implementing it with great success in several pilot educational programs and facilities dedicated to salvaging the academic potential so often lost early within the traditional curriculum.

Contemporary biology has also inspired new ways of facilitating academic learning by identifying the precise neurological bases of many forms of information retention, as well as revealing the many ways that controllable aspects of the external learning environment relate to academic learning (Seita 2002). In the case of students whose greatest intellectual potential for learning lies outside the linguistic and quantitative logic focus and/or lecture-based instruction, the multiple intelligence approach to learning, active hands-on methods and materials of instruction, and innovative applications of brain-based methods for stimulating learning all represent significant potential for continued evolution of American education. Still, the social realities of contemporary economic factors severely constrain the large-scale expansion of American education to exploit the maximal potential value of these innovative educational concepts. Unfortunately, the cost of designing and implementing multiple intelligence-based educational programs, active learning course materials, and brain-based learning accommodations is simply not realistically within the budget of most public education programs.

However, there is another even more ubiquitous source of anecdotal evidence suggesting the potential of more affordable alternatives to the lecture-based educational approach, even as pertains to subject matter emphasizing factual recall, by necessity.

While often considered the bane of educational achievement, television has demonstrated the degree to which some poorly achieving students are indeed capable of learning and factual recall that belies their academic performance. Unlike the comparative limits of public funds available to fully incorporate multiple intelligence, brain-based, and active learning educational program materials, traditional sources of government grants and other resources are likely sufficient to unlock much of the tremendous unused (or underused) potential of ordinary television for educational purposes.

The concept of this proposed research relates to the use of ordinary television and VHS educational programming available from existing public education television programming as a means of improving learning among primary and secondary students as determined by measurement of factual recall in connection with traditional lessons in history, science, and foreign language. More specifically, the proposed study is intended to (1) further define the most relevant criteria for identifying students capable of benefiting from televised lessons; (2) to determine whether or not student preference is a reliable indicator of likely benefit; and (3) to outline an approximate proportion of traditional lecture-to-televised lesson conducive to optimal results of the technique.

Preliminary Literature Review: Active Learning Approach

The available research into the relative ineffectiveness of traditional lecture-based academic instruction includes studies comparing subject matter retention in comparable groups of students at various middle school and secondary school levels between those who received only traditional lectures and those whose lessons on the same subject matter included demonstrations (Cookson 2005) designed to supplement the corresponding text and lecture material.

Other similar studies examined the relative effectiveness of (1) the lecture and textbook method (Bickman 2003), (2) physical demonstrations without active participation (Byerly 2001), and (3) active, hands-on participation-based instruction (Adams & Hamm 1994). Those studies and many others led to widespread conclusions among educators (Glanz 2003) that combining the traditional lecture and textbook method of instruction with virtually any component of physical demonstration increases both comprehension and subsequent retention and factual recall, and that active, hands-on experience in conjunction with corresponding lecture material provides nearly universal benefit.

Brain-Based Approach:

Psychologists and other human behaviorists have long known of the comparative ease with which younger students form neural connections in response to new experiences as compared with adult learners (Gerrig & Zimbardo 2005). More particularly, according to Seita (2002), numerous independent studies have established that the ability to form neural pathways in response to the processing of new information peaks shortly before puberty (Thompson) and also occurs across the spectrum of different experiences (Woods) rather than primarily in response to information communicated via linguistic channels.

Bruer (1999) suggested that both earlier social theories of learning, such as detailed by Vygotsky (1978), and much more recent brain imaging studies confirm the conceptual validity of the correlation between active participation in lessons and significant measurable benefit as compared to traditional (i.e., passive) methods of academic instruction. Multiple Intelligences Approach

Howard Gardner (1999) pioneered the theory of Multiple Intelligences (Nolen 2003), in which he demonstrated the degree to which traditional lecture and textbook- only methods of academic instructions fail to meet the needs of students whose particular intellectual strengths lie in the other six types of intelligence described by Gardner (1999) as early as 1989. Parallel studies in 1994 (Lowery) and 1999 (Nabors) illustrated the positive effects on learning provided by active, hands-on participation in an inquiry-based format that encourages students to formulate their own explanations, although others (Stanford 1993) distinguished the relative applicability of such an approach to science and non-science-related subjects. Nevertheless, all previous research into the value of including practical demonstrations, active, hands-on approaches, inquiry-based learning, and presentation of subject matter along a much broader range of intellectual talents suggests that they are all associated with significantly improved results compared to the results achievable exclusively through traditional lecture and textbook-based academic instructional methods (Schroeder & Spannagel 2006).

Research Questions:

Unfortunately, as promising as the potential benefits of incorporating brain-based, active learning, inquiry-based, hands-on participation, and multiple intelligence-based methods of academic instruction is, comprehensive programs of this nature are largely unavailable on a wide scale, owing to budgetary considerations. However, since virtually every tested addition of multidimensional instruction has been associated with beneficial results (Schroeder & Spannagel 2006), intuition would suggest that the addition of instruction via educational programming is also likely to be conducive to improvement over traditional lecture and textbook-only methods of instruction.

Obviously, if given the choice between non-academic programming and educational programming, most middle and secondary school students would prefer the former. On the other hand, where methods of instruction depart from the traditional limitation to lecture and textbooks only (Bimonte 2005), even voluntary class attendance increases. Nevertheless, contemporary education programs generally neglect the potentially valuable medium of televised instruction except in connection with isolated use for non-academic subjects such as driver's education.

This is unfortunate, given the high degree of likelihood that presenting American History lessons in the form of a VHS Civil War series, for just one example, would promote both active interest in class and better subject matter retention than presenting the same material exclusively in the traditional manner. Furthermore, the demonstrated recent popularity of mainstream movie productions such as Saving Private Ryan (1998) and televised series such as HBO's Band of Brothers (2000), among others, strongly suggests the value of using this medium to present some of the same lessons in world history that so often fail to garner any interest among students at all when communicated exclusively through dry lectures and textbook reading assignments. In fact, it is quite conceivable that the former would even increase potential interest in the latter, provided the material were first introduced through the medium proposed for research in this project.

Therefore, the specific questions proposed for examination include:

1. To what degree does presentation of subject matter in televised format improve comprehension and retention compared to the traditional lecture and textbook- only method of instruction?

2. Does the tested method benefit all students equally?

3. To the extent the tested method does not benefit all students equally, what is the relationship between previous academic performance (i.e., and traditional methods of instruction) and any measurable benefit?