The debator in action.
November 12th, 2008Well I am having issues getting the video online, but here are two stills from a debate I was involved with earlier today. I hope to have the full video online in the next day or so.
Update One: The transcript of my speech as delivered is below. My scripted speech was 571 words long. Once it had rebuttal added in and some ad lib on the front it became 916 words when delivered. And near perfect timing to 15 seconds off the 6 minutes maximum.
Update Two: You should now be able to see the video here:
“THAT lecturing has no place in the university of the 21st century.”
Third Speaker – Affirmative.
Good Afternoon,
The university of the 21st century. It must meet the needs of its most important stakeholder, its students.
And it is currently failing to do so.
Instead it is meeting the needs of what is convenient to staff members, and what is cheap, and what saves money, and what cuts down on budgets. It doesn’t meet the needs of its students and what is needed is engagement.
Lecturing does not engage with students, instead they just become passive listeners, with information by all means going in one ear. But straight out the other.
So far, all we have heard from the negating team is arguments revolving around tradition,
and what is best financially for the university,
and what is the most convenient to university staff members.And it is clearly apparent that these arguments have been as successful as those who tried to argue against giving women the right to vote or equal rights to all races.
I am here today to say that progress is here, not tradition.
And the negating team will have you believe that it is lecturing that is what we do. No. It is eduction [that] is what we do.
Ladies and Gentlemen: The lecture is dead.
Massey University has a rich 80 year history of educating in the ways of the 20th century.
But it is now time for us, as university staff members, to educate ourselves in how to operate in the 21st. To embrace the change.We may have the best learning environment for those who grew up in the 20th.
But do we really for the 21st?As Associate Professor Lineham pointed out in his opening address the 20th century university, the past was about the group, educating the masses as easily and as cheaply as possible.
But the 21st century is about the student, and it is about the individual and how we can be the best for them.
To be a successful university in this modern times we need to carefully consider what students are looking for in their education.
And what are they looking for?
Our never ending series of surveys often comes up with the same series of buzz words namely:
Quality
Interaction
Accessibility
Relevance
Enjoyment
and InnovationI ask you what do these words really mean to us?
But most importantly where does the word lecture fit in?
It doesn’t.
And that is because sitting behind a wooden desk in a lecture hall,
which is modelled on the Colosseum of Rome,
listening to a monotonous drone,
while being actively casted for the next Pink Floyd video
has no place in the 21st century university.Ladies and Gentlemen, we must stop using these buzz words as buzz words and we must give them clear meaning, definition and use.
Quality isn’t about hiring the best orator to put the students to sleep with.
It is about delivering the best all round package to our students.We should carefully note that the Government has moved away from a funding model based on how many sheep we can get through the door to one where abouts the quality of education matters.
Interaction isn’t about brave students asking questions in class. It is about group discussions and group projects,
It is about building networks that will last into the workforce
and it is about developing innovative teams of people who will actually go out there into the wide world and define and change it.Accessibility and Relevance is not about putting some content on Web-CT or Moodle.
It is about being realistic.It is about the lecture having no place in the university of the 21st century
because it has no place in the world.Can you hear the funeral bells?
THE LECTURE IS DEAD.
The negating team can say all they like about:
Indigenous knowledge. But have we forgotten that indigenous cultures never had lectures. They had group discussions and tutorials. It was about interaction.
They say that young people like to work with their mentors. I completely agree. Lecturing does not do that. Lecturing makes the young people [become] the people who are being dictated to. And I can tell you now no young person likes to be told what to do.
Why is it that students complain about how their parents are lecturing them? They don’t enjoy it, do they?
I ask you if lecturing was so full and so great to the university then why is this very lecture hall, with you great lectures so empty?
If lecturing was so great, then why are lecturing halls filled with 10% of the class, while the other 90% are sitting on facebook at home?
Why do we have to have open entry? Surely if education, if lecturing was so great, our attendance rates would be 110% and people would be queuing up at the door. It is not happening because lecturing is dead.
And nothing the negating team can do will resurrect the dead lecture.
Change isn’t coming.
It has come.
We must embrace the change or we will be left behind.
We had a mention of a university being ranked 20th in the world. Where are we? We are way down, we are about 200th if not below. They’re not lecturing, they’re being interactive.
If we do not change, we will end up a relic like the Colosseum, looking beautifully stunning with our rich ivory towers but in terms of real relevance we will mean very little to the world.
Thank you.
