The lecture as a trans medial pedagogical form

The Lecture as a Trans-Medial Pedagogical Form Norm Friesen PhD Al taqui (flickr)

We are today as far into the electric age as the Elizabethans had advanced into the typograph and mechanical age.
- Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy

Overview
Current views on the lecture: “rooted in orality” versus print, electronic & digital media
The Medieval lecture: cultural preservation
The 18 th century lecture: authorial performance
The 20 th century lecture: dramaturgical effect
The 21 st century lecture: the future of an illusion – the lecture as hermeneutic

Diana Laurillard (1993/2001)
Why aren’t lectures scrapped as a teaching method? If we forget the eight hundred years of university tradition that legitimises them, and imagine starting afresh with the problem of how to enable a large percentage of the population to understand difficult and complex ideas, I doubt that lectures will immediately spring to mind as the obvious solution. (93)

What are the assumptions here?
Communication as information transmission
What is the most efficient way?
Verbally: the lecture is “rooted in orality”
Writing, text, printing, electronic, digital
“ The sheer quantity of information conveyed by press-magazines-film-TV-radio far exceeds the quantity of information conveyed by school instruction and texts. This challenge has destroyed the monopoly of the book as a teaching aid”

Communication as Information Transmission Lectern Book Radio Internet; multimedia Lectern Print Radio Internet & Multimedia Tempor- ality Synchronous; one place, one time Asynchronous; anyplace, anytime Synchronous; one place, one time Synchronous & Asynchronous Inter- activity Low None None High (potentially) Numbers Reached Dozens, hundreds Unlimited; thousands Unlimited; 100’s of 1000’s Unlimited; millions

The medieval Lecture
Medieval era: 5 th to the 15 th century in Europe
No printing press; books are extremely precious; seen as authorities
Lecture (read) from the cathedra (lectern), on which books were designed to fit.
one spoke of going to a lecture to “hear” the a“books” being read

Teaching & Learning as Recovery
Lecture was a reading, and reading was a lecture (of sorts; public lectures common)
A world of “drifting texts and vanishing manuscripts” (E. Eisenstein)
“ the simplest way of getting [books] ... was for the teacher to dictate the texts to his pupils” (Hajnal)
Lecture was for copying, to recovery

THE PRINTING PRESS ARRIVES

through the printing press, texts are multiplied, “as now a book is reproduced many thousandfold. Therefore if one, two, three, ten or twenty are burnt or otherwise are given up, there are still very many additional others, so that a book is never totally lost...”
Informational abudance (relative to earlier situation)

The early modern lecture
The eighteenth [century] appears to be the century when dictation was first stopped, even if only erratically at first” (2006, p. 85).
Mixture of glosses and recitation
“ masters noted down on their own copies... a few words by way of résumé, and as a help in their lectures”
25 year lecture as a gloss & commen- tary on book of Isaiah (16 th c.)
Ulrich Pregizer

The 18 th Century Lecture: Johann Gottlieb Fichte
In the 1790’s in the University of Jena, Fichte became one of the first German professors who began officially lecturing without a set text... Fichte and other Romantics began lecturing on their own work without any pretense that that they were glossing a text or recapitulating a tradition... Departure from an actual or even virtual textbook as a basis for lecturing constituted the ultimate break with the sermon [or medieval lecture]. (p. 410)

Fichte as Lecturer
“ extraordinary”
Goethe
“ rapturous”
Hegel
Could read as if speaking, and speak as if reading
My principle concern is not what “is printed in books for us to read,” but rather, “what has stirred and transformed our spirit” (Fichte).
I wish to “succeed in scattering in your souls fiery sparks which will arouse and stir them.”

W. Clark, Academic Charisma & the Origins of the Research University
In Romantic Jena and elsewhere, the cathedra [or podium] became a locus where one created knowledge, became a site of the new, radical stress on spontaneity, creativity and originality. ... a new relation between the Romantic “I” pontificating from the cathedra and the academic chorus [or audience began to emerge].

Theory of knowledge
Hermeneutic: meaning originates in the speaking subject
It is also created anew in the listening audience: “...scattering in your souls fiery sparks which will arouse and stir them.”
“ passionate” and “moving” lecture(r)

20 th Century...

20 th Century Lectures & their Technology Virginia Woolf Theodore Adorno Richard Feynman Stephen Hawking

Lectures in the 20 th Century: Dramaturgical Effect
“ In our society we recognize three main modes of animating spoken words: memorization, aloud reading... and fresh talk . In the case of fresh talk, the text is formulated by the animator from moment to moment, or at least from clause to clause. Fresh talk is perhaps the general ideal and (with the assistance of notes) quite common. ...a great number of lectures depend upon a fresh-talk illusion .”

Goffman
“ Your effective speaker is someone who has written his reading text in the spoken register; he has tied him- self in advance to his upcoming audience with a typewriter ribbon”
The most important selves in the lecture is the “self-as-animator” and the “textual self;” the textual self stands behind the self-as-animator” to create the dramaturgical effect / performance

Lecturing in the 21 st Century (Lecturing to Large Groups, Morton, 2009)
share their passion and enthusiasm for the subject by telling students why they are personally interested in this topic. Where possible, this could be a link to their personal research;
link the lecture to some current news or activity
use relevant and current examples to illustrate the point
(structure, preparation and variation)

Lecturing in the 21 st Century
Lecturing is about a personal, relevant and current connection between the lecturer & the audience
An emotional connection between the two
It is about cultivating an illusion of spontaneity, of direct communication.
The illusion is created through technology or media

Lecture as Hermeneutic Event
not about the textual self, about the dead letters recorded well in advance of the lecture itself.
about the illusion of fresh talk; about the connection of speaker and audience
The lecture, in short, transforms the artefact of the text into an event
An artefact can be reproduced; an event (think of music) is different each time

Examples
TED Talks (Technology Entertainment & Design) http://www.ted.com
Teachers’ TV: http://www.teachers.tv/
Academic Earth: http://academicearth.org/ “Online courses from the world's top scholars”
5 min knowledge: http://www.5min.com/
Subject collections: e.g., http://www.egs.edu http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/

Conclusion
Lecturing is not about information transmission
Is about personal, emotional connection, bringing the subject alive for the audience
Showing it is alive in the lecturer via fresh talk
Media are essential to this achievement
“ As to the question regarding the bet method of lecturing... [I] have been regretfully forced to the conclusion that the best way a man can, is the best way for him to lecture.” (John Dewey, 1891)

More General Conclusions
It is not a question of students being “digital natives” and of an older generation of teachers being “digital immigrants”
We are all digital nomads (in different ways), and the better we are able to know terrain within and between media, the better
Education & teaching is about becoming an adept nomad, from text to orality to recording (lecture), from print to writing (exam), etc.

Happy Travels!

http://learningspaces.org	724
http://kmschoolproject.blogspot.com	344
http://humantouchanddigitalpersonality.wordpress.com	103
http://kmschoolproject.blogspot.ru	82
http://normfriesen.info	10
http://lj-toys.com	6
http://www.learningspaces.org	5
url_unknown	2
http://l.lj-toys.com	2
http://localhost	2
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com	2
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	1
http://192.168.16.42:15871	1
http://www.twylah.com	1

The lecture as a trans medial pedagogical form

by Norm Friesen

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

14 Embeds 1,285

Statistics

The lecture as a trans medial pedagogical form Webinar Transcript