Students have realised AI tools can provide them with notes that is several times more easy, more comprehensive and more digestible. The need for lecture is plainly redundant
Chalk and talk and PPT-aided lectures have been key teaching techniques used in colleges and universities. Generations of students have been taught in the places of higher education through this method. However, through their apathy, the Gen Z (the generation of people born between 1997 and 2012) students are constantly demolishing this old method in our classrooms. Faculty members and college administrators are realising that classroom teaching is dead (almost).
Several factors have contributed to the indifferent behaviour of Gen Z students towards lectures. To make teaching interesting, instructors introduced several cosmetic changes to their teaching style such as guided interactions and breakup groups. Although these changes were welcomed in the beginning, but they lost their charm over the time. Now, students are asking for a radical change in our teaching approach.
The unique selling point of instructor-driven lectures is that it provides study material in the classroom in an easy-to-digest form. In those days, when books and textbooks were not easily available and their content was hard to understand, attending class made sense to the students where an instructor explained to them everything and showed the steps or procedures on the board. It helped those who attended to get good marks and grades in their written exams. Today this very need has disappeared. Students have realised AI tools such as ChatGPT can provide them with notes that is several times more easy, more comprehensive and more digestible. The need for lecture or lecture-notes is plainly redundant.
Furthermore, today’s students demand skill sets that are useful in their careers and for their next job. Although this need was also felt by the earlier generation of students, they were not voicing it as strongly as the Gen Z students. Today’s youth have been showing interest in field visits, industry visits, case-based teaching, and simulations. They show liking for classroom discussions and interactions. They need to be given examples first and abstract ideas next. Their attention span to lectures has reduced considerably. Instructors in colleges are realising that their students are disconnected with and disengaged from the old style of ‘listen-to-me’ lecturing or any variation of it.
Which style of teaching and learning do they prefer? They want to learn by doing. Learning through concrete experience (see, do, touch) as well as through active experimentation (ideate, design, construct) are their preferred choices. We see them bunking classes without hesitation when it is only lecture based. They attend in full strength when there are activities in class. Bunking or sleeping in class is the way they show disdain.
What is the way forward in this deadlock? Our instructors and colleges have to embrace radical change in our approach to teaching and learning. It’s the right time to take new direction when the national education policy 2020 envisages to extend flexibility, autonomy and liberty to teachers, learners, colleges and universities.
A new direction we can take at the level of instruction is to embrace problem-based learning (PBL). PBL’s variations are project-based teaching and case-based teaching.
In PBL or in project-based teaching, the instructor provides a major problem or a series of problems (within a course or subject which could also be interdisciplinary) to a student or student groups to work on and develop solutions on their own. It may involve conducting or doing experiments, design, field visits, surveys, or research. PBL should not be only add-on to the regular teaching. There won’t be any teaching in this subject, but only facilitation of discourse. It is standalone learning activity. They consult the instructor at different stages. They may have to take the prior approval from the instructor that the experiment they have designed or field visits adheres to safety measures and that they use safety gadgets. They submit their solution in a report which is examined by the instructor and is marked/graded for the university assessment. The university needs to provide the necessary freedom to the instructor working in the affiliated college to design the PBL course, assess student work, measure the learning outcomes and give their grades/marks. A number of teaching and learning journals on PBL provide examples about how this effective method can be implemented in various disciplines and can provide guidance to interested teachers.
In management studies and humanities, the PBL can be implemented through case-based teaching (CBT). How can PBL foster experiential learning in students? PBL follows the principle of learning by doing. PBL elicits knowledge and skills in ideation, design of experiments, data and information gathering, research, independent learning, planning, organising, implementation, communication, team work, negotiation, problem-solving, and report writing. These are the valuable hard and soft skills demanded by employers. The skill sets gained in PBL courses are transferable to the future jobs and careers. Can the students learn subject content set by the university in PBL? In fact, by going through this problem-solving and implementation process, they gain all the learning outcomes in a course (subject) in terms of knowledge, skills and abilities. One may ask what is the lacuna in a lab practical seen in subjects like physics, chemistry and botany? A lab practical which is a part of studying in a course (subject), provides only procedural knowledge, i.e., how to do an experiment. It doesn’t challenge a learner how to solve a real problem.
How can Goan industries contribute to PBL endeavours in our neighbourhood colleges? Industries have been lamenting that our graduates are not employable, lack skill sets, attitudes, and intrapreneurship. All these expectations can be fulfilled in a PBL experience. Goan industries can contribute towards the success of PBL adoption by the Goan instructors and colleges through donating new and used equipment, machineries, instruments, raw materials and simulation software to hackathon or tinker labs and workshops of colleges, allowing access to their testing facilities, and providing advisement from their employees to instructors and students. Instructors and colleges alone cannot implement these changes. Industries need to pitch in now. Transformation of our teaching and learning is the call of the day. The way forward is implementing purposeful and meaningful teaching and learning approaches and methods in our colleges and universities such as PBL and case-based teaching that engenders true student learning and education.
(Prof (Dr) Raveendranath Nayak is with DCT’s Srinivassa Sinai Dempo College (Autonomous), Cujira, Bambolim.)
