Confessions of a Converted Lecturer

I recently watched this video, which explains why students do not learn from lecturing at them in an attempt to dump information directly into their brains. He explains the importance of peer education. Anyone involved with education, or an interest in pedagogy should watch this video.

Pedagogy has been on the top of my mind the past few weeks since I started teaching information literacy sessions for my new job at Concordia University College of Alberta. With so many other responsibilities (the library’s websites and collections) it is has been hard to resist the temptation to just lecture. It’s so easy to prepare 45 minutes worth of material on searching, evaluating, and/or citing information. But I know that I never learned well that way, and I know it doesn’t work. I see the students eyes glazing over. This video helped to reminded what I have known for a long while. I need to start incorporating more active learning and cooperative learning into my information literacy sessions. I call myself a constructivist as far as teaching philosophy goes, and I need to start putting my money where my mouth is.

I should give credit where credit is due, I found this video on Dwayne Harapnuik’s blog, Dwayne is the VP academic of Concordia University College of Alberta.