Back to sage on a stage?

 A lecture used to be a person standing in the front of a room talking at people in the rest of the room, most likely aided by stuff to look at on a blackboard, whiteboard or screen. The University was already putting pressure on us, teaching staff, to go with the times and do something a bit more innovative. We had starting that, but quite a lot of lectures were still just that. And then the pandemic hit.

We suddenly had to do everything online. I got into the routine of recording my lectures, and then going through the material with my students in live sessions. What I do in these depends a bit on the module. If you have a small group you can just set them a task and then go through what they have done. Or you can show them a figure and ask them to interpret it. What are these peaks in the graph? Maybe they are interglacials! Or ice rafting events. Or whatever. If it is a big group you can do quizzes, and then talk through the answers. I quite like how that shows how much the students have understood! It is very rare that a student will volunteer the information that they haven't understood something, but if there is a quiz and they are answering it anonymously, you can pick out that they didn't, and explain things again.

And when we were allowed to teach in person again, I continued with the concept of recorded lectures and live digesting it. In my first year module, I would just do quizzes. You can do these in such a way that both the people physically present and those joining online can join in on equal terms. And I quite enjoy it! And some of the students clearly did too. But then I started to get requests from students. They said they struggle to learn this way. They preferred to be talked through the material live. They said that that way, they could ask questions if there was something they didn't understand. I was a bit surprised by that. Many years of teaching has taught me that the chance that a student, especially a first year student, asks a question, is very small.

I decided to try to get a clearer view on the matter. The next time I saw the students, I just used one of my quizzes to ask them how they want to be taught in this module. And there indeed was a majority for live lecturing! They just want me to stand there and talk at them. I will try to keep the lectures brief, and then do a bit of an interactive thing afterwards, but if this is how the students wants to be taught then so be it. 20th-century teaching, here I come!