It’s All In The Mind: an apologia for practical instruction
Before we get into the meat of the opinionated rant for this week, I feel I should fly my colours and make my position clear. I am a big fan of hands-on learning. Huge in fact. But only as it benefits the students. Let me explain.
Here in my wee departmental home, we have started experimenting with hands-on learning in a variety of different modes — by setting practical tasks for the students to do that relate to the various areas of study we cover. The students seem to love it: from little comments such as “I’m excited!” to continuing blogging long after the gradebook has been finalized all combine to suggest that this kind of learning appeals. Yet I am still occasionally encountering resistance from my colleagues, both locally and more broadly, who question the validity of hands-on activities alongside critical scholarship.
So, as a way of getting clear in my own head all the defenses and rationale for what I value as a teacher, here is my list of why I think hands-on has a place in a critical tertiary education.
Point the first - the read/write world: As I noted last week, the literacies of students entering University are changing. This doesn’t mean, I hasten to add, that I think they can get away with not learning how to construct a traditional essay. To the contrary, I am a stickler for being able to write a coherent, formal piece of extended argument. It’s just that essays aren’t the only form of expression a student should be comfortable with. The world is changing, fast, and if we stick with outdated models for engaging in the world, then we’re going to become irrelevant. We’ll turn out future professors, not future citizens. This leads into…
Point the second - the speed of change: The job for life has gone the way of the dodo. The students we are educating now will have multiple, often quite distinct and varied, careers. I’ve heard estimates that range from 6-16 different jobs in a working lifetime. We’re not talking about doing the same thing for a different company here — we’re talking about seachanges that are as regular as the tides. Case in point: me. Before I was an academic, I manned a bookstore, I worked in photography and design (and still do a little work on the side for my favourite client), did a bit of light coding…and I’ve still got thirty+ years of working life ahead of me (fingers crossed!) We can’t teach just straight skills. We also need to teach the acquisition of skills. If you’ll excuse a horrible buzzword, we need to foster life-long learning. This means not teaching to a technology, or ‘which button to press,’ but creating a space in which students can explore practical skills development in a way that makes sense to them.
Point the third - it’s engaging: There is a great quote (that I’ve seen with various attributions). It goes. “Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I will remember. Involve me and I will understand.” Teaching about the internet, I could explain virtual community and shifting communication patterns - yawn. Or I could make them do a blog and swap links and see what emerged out of their own online activity. That latter is and was far more interesting, engaging, and illuminating in terms of their understanding. Teaching television production this semester, it’s amazing to see them have that ‘lightbulb moment’ when all the theory that has been crammed into their heads crystallizes into understanding as they look through the viewfinder and compose their first shot.
Point the fourth - it’s more fun for me: This one is more subjective, but here goes. I honestly love teaching. I think it’s great fun. Lecturing and taking seminars, watching students learn and comprehend new ideas is most nifty. Practical teaching is all that, but its also challenging and more rewarding. You have to be on your toes, but because the practical is more engaging and relevant for the students, they meet you halfway.
Those are my reasons for supporting practical teaching so far. No doubt I’ll think of more as the semesters roll by. And whilst I suspect that some of the critiques I’ve heard of practical teaching are spawned from equally personal and subjective positions, there are two more general comments that I think might be useful to address.
Comment the first: practical teaching is time-consuming: As any lecturer knows, teaching is time-consuming. If you let it, it can take over your day. There is this perception that practical teaching is more time-consuming than more ‘traditional’ lectures or seminars. Based on my experiences, I’m not convinced. I think the difference lies in where time is chewed. If you prep your lectures on a weekly basis, as most of my colleagues seem to, then you probably spend half a dozen hours a week, about 80 hours a semester (if you’re good!) For practical teaching, as I’ve found, the majority of the time is sunk in great big lumps, mainly in preparation and setup. But if this prep is done right, once it is over, the practical work runs itself, fuelled by the enthusiasm and engagement of the students themselves.
Of course, my experience may be skewed in that the areas that I lecture in tend to be areas that are changing rapidly, and so I can’t rely on the same lecture notes year in, year out. I always have to revise and rewrite large chunks of my theoretical courses anyway. So the prep load for a practical course doesn’t seem that much. A colleague who teaches in a more stable area and has a more fixed set of course materials may see a larger disaparity in the workload models.
Comment the second: practical teaching turns a critical university education into one indistinguishable from that of a trade school: Putting to one side the charges of eliteness and snobbery such comments demand, I always feel that I must, respectfully but forcefully, disagree with this claim. This links back to my second point above — learning to learn. By being able to work hands-on within their course of critical study, students learn to adapt and apply the critical and theoretical knowledge they are aquiring in their general course of study. It doesn’t detract from critical scholarship — if anything, it adds to and enhances it.
Practical teaching isn’t for every lecturer or every course. But I strongly support any academic who is interested in incorporating large or small practical exercises in their courses. Who knows what the students might learn. Who knows what you might learn too.
Of course, now I am interested to hear what other people’s experiences are in doing practical work in class. Lines are open, callers, and my squadron of flying monkeys is standing by to take your calls!
