Teaching and
learning are interrelated. Adults
draw upon their experiences when they become students. Teachers draw upon their
past as well. Unfortunately, all students and teachers have been in a classroom
of ineffective teaching, and though they may recognize the failures; they may
not be able to fix it. Adult learners make up a large number of students today
and yet teaching methods may not have evolved to include andragogical teaching.
Many of the “tried and true” teaching strategies of the past continue to be
employed for the adult learner. Students in their 20s and beyond bring a level
of experience to their schooling that requires a different approach to
successful learning. I will compare and contrast an ineffective learning method
from my past that used traditional theories of teaching with concepts and ideas
that would improve upon the ineffective teaching.
I took a course in
graduate school at the University of Southern California, Keck School of
Medicine. In 1980, I was a student of a PhD program in pharmacology and
nutrition. The course was one that pharmacology students took with second-year
medical students. It was a traditional setting, with a classroom-type teaching.
Four professors rotated through this course as the lecturers and instructors,
each one speaking and teaching his specialty within the study of pharmacology.
The class met every day with a weekly three-hour lab. I was one of four
students from our department enrolled in the course, the rest were medical
students. Women were not readily acknowledged as serious students by all the
professors in our department. One in particular asked me if I was planning to
hang my diploma in the nursery. At first I was a little confused, thinking of a
nursery of plants and trees. But then I realized he was talking about babies
and children, which was presumptuous since I was not pregnant or talking about family.
I was 25 years old. The class was taught in a lecture hall, theater style, with
the professor standing up front, lecturing to the class for the entire period.
Everyone took notes rapidly. The medical students had more camaraderie, and for
every lecture one student would take notes to share with his classmates to
improve the dissemination of information. There was no camaraderie with the
four pharmacology students. However, I did manage to get copies of all these
additional notes. Some professors used a chalkboard for emphasis of material
being presented, but good note taking fell upon each student and was paramount
to getting a good grade. The teaching
method employed by the professors for this course was lecture and the textbook,
which was to be read and studied by the students. The teaching methods were
based on pedagogy theory. We were the learners; they were the teachers
dispensing the material to be learned. Questions were not asked during the
lectures. Learners were there to listen, be serious and pass the exams. There
were two exams, a mid-term and a final. Questions were multiple choice, no
essay, more of a pedagogical theory. There were no questions that required
thought or discussion. While pharmacology has many areas of learning where only
one answer will do, there is still some learning that requires discoursing and
discovering. This was not addressed. One professor had difficulty speaking
English and consequently taking notes in his class presented an additional
challenge. Although we were amused by his description of illnesses that caused
“cheers and feva,” I often could not follow his lectures without a visual
component.
The lab was
focused on learning about drugs and their effects. The methods of learning were
hands-on and based on discovering for yourself the effects of pharmaceuticals
on live rabbits. After some of the labs, we administered potassium chloride,
which would induce death. It was visual, it was real, and it was memorable. I
would say the labs were effective. Since this was a class for medical students,
it was deemed necessary by the teachers for students to have hands-on
experience with life and death situations and study the effect of drugs on
living creatures. Of course, it was better to try this out on rabbits than
people. Perhaps, learners would have a sense of respect for life, seeing a
rabbit in pain. But it may have made some students more callous. It would have
been a good time to teach about the sanctity of life before the labs and
encourage students to have respect for the animals who are giving their lives
for science. As an adult learner,
experience in this case reflects a deeper respect for life.
There were several
things that made this teaching situation not conducive to my preference of
learning. First, the lectures were not visual. I am not a good auditory-only
learner. This might have been fine if the textbook had some visual
explanations, but it was the traditional pharmacology book that had been used
for years. I learned by myself, studying the text, reading my notes and writing
out the information I had learned. I had a strong desire to do well, which is andragogical.
In a sense, I had some input into how I learned. I found I could understand the
material if I taught it to myself, as if I was the teacher. My methods of study
were based on my experience of what worked in college the previous four years.
However, the teachers did not take into account various learning styles, this
was left for each student to do on his own, but then that does reflect the
adult learner. The cooperative learning climate was more amongst the medical
students, and to a much lesser degree with the pharmacology students. We did
not meet together and discuss the lectures or share the notes, as did the
medical students. This was a disconnect. I did not feel that I belonged to
either group. The med students were stronger in force, combining their efforts
to tackle the courses. Consequently, I found a study partner that was a medical
student, where we could direct our learning in an efficient andragogical
manner. I took charge of my learning. The professors were not available to
students for having any discussions. This reflects the pedagogical nature of
teaching in the 1980s. Professors were not inclined to see students as equal in
intelligence, at least not while they were still students.
Changes I would
make include adding visual to lectures through slides or handouts. Today there
are many sources that were not available in the 1980s. DNA molecules that are
animated, drugs that are broken down into their molecule structure, to show the
chemical reactions that take place at the cellular level would provide
additional sensory learning that would improve learning. Even back then,
illustrations could have been utilized to explain the simple concepts as well
as the more complicated ones. But today, three-dimensional visuals are
available that would greatly enhance learning for both pedagogy and andragogy.
Another change I would make is to include more trial and error learning in a
lab setting and add an additional virtual lab. Andragogical theory provides
learners with the ability to choose pathways. A traditional lab offers a
student to act on his own thinking. Unfortunately, too many times students
already know the answers that they are to discover in the lab. This often puts
students under pressure to get the “right” answer for the high grade. There is
often a fear of not doing well, or getting the wrong answer. This reflects the
pedagogical theory. The teacher dispenses the correct answer. Adult learners
understand that wrong answers bring understanding in a laboratory setting. It
is the trial and error method of learning (Oblinger, 2003). Virtual labs such as those being used at
MIT, enable students to go online at any time of the day and experiment with
solving problems and visually seeing the results (Oblinger, 2003).
Virtual labs are also highly
interactive, do not cost as much, since the materials are all virtual, and
allow students to perform the lab a number of times without wasting expensive
chemicals or rabbits. Virtual labs enable a student to experiment in the safety
of his own computer setting and take the time to figure it out and make
mistakes.
A change in
atmosphere would be another improvement in the learning experiences of this USC
course. According to Knowles, adult students do better in an andragogical
setting of mutual trust and collaborative efforts, instead of the pedagogical
methods that produce a tense, authority driven climate, where students are
highly competitive and professors very formal and aloof (Knowles, Holton, &
Swanson, 2007). Years of being the pedagog unnecessarily puts a student ill at
ease with teachers. There was always the wrong answer, which made the climate
uncomfortable and judgmental. This is something that comes into play in the
younger grades, and too often sets the tone for the future. Students become
afraid to question, to raise their hands. In my experiences, there were only
three professors in college that were available and encouraged dialogue. Yet,
it is important for students to make the leap to andragogical methods of
learning when they reach higher institutions and leave behind the pedagogical
approach. When teachers are open to learning from the students as well as the
students from the teachers, the atmosphere will be more andragogical and
everyone will benefit. Perhaps it is going back to what “the Greeks invented -- what we
now call the Socratic dialogue, in which the leader or a group member poses a
question or dilemma and the group members pool their thinking and experience to
seek an answer or solution” (Knowles, Holton, & Swanson, 2007). Too often, the professors that taught
the material in our USC course seemed bored with the subject and bored with the
delivery. Perhaps if there was an open learning process, the teacher and the
student would be learning something together in what Knowles called shared
authority (Knowles, Holton & Swanson, 2007).
References
Knowles, M.,
Holton, E., & Swanson, R. (2005) The
Adult Learner, New York, New York: McGraw Hill, 1-34.
Oblinger,
D. (2003). Boomers, Gen-Xers and Millenials: Understanding the new students.
Retrieved from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0342.pdf
