A revolutionary approach to university teaching

We are all familiar with the classical mode of teaching. The instructor and other attendees, each sitting alone in a geographical location as far away as possible from all the others,  look at shared PowerPoint slide and a grid of black rectangles with names. The names refer to students, although they are usually not their full names but some identifier they have given to Zoom or Teams: “Jenny”, “Cute”, whatever. The black boxes can occasionally sport a funny picture or graffiti, occasionally an old photograph of the student, and in exceptional cases a live webcam shot (this rare occurrence is typically limited to the first lecture in the semester).

I have a groundbreaking proposal. A better teaching and learning experience may be possible! Here how it could work:

• For each course, we need to reserve, at lecture times, a room in the university, large enough to host all the students. It should include two distinct areas (not physically separated, but with the distinction clear to all participants): on one side, seats for the students; in the other part, a presentation space (with a screen and a writing area visible to all) for the instructor. If we need a fancy name for such rooms, we could call them “auditoriums”.
• On the appointed times, actually a few minutes before, both the students and the instructor come into the room, to their respective side.
• The instructor presents material that he has carefully prepared and revised in the best interest of knowledge and skill transmission. There are opportunities  for questions and discussions, but the instructor talks during most of the lecture time and remains  in control — being, after all, the one who has more experience and knowledge of the topic.
• During the lecture, students may take notes to help them remember salient points.
• At the end of the lecture everyone disperses, moving on to other lectures or occupations.

The most subversive — and hard to implement — feature of this arrangement is that all participants are actually together, under the same roof, for the entire duration of the lecture, and can communicate directly without the help of any network device!

I realize this idea is revolutionary and am aware of the technological challenges and the required financial, structural and psychological investment, all in the hope of a more effective way of transferring knowledge.

Outlandish as it sounds, maybe it is still worth a try?

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