Should College Lecture Clases Be Replaced by Software?
By Marty Nemko Ralph Wolff, Executive Director of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges likes to convene “blue sky” meetings. That’s a loftier (pardon the pun) way to describe a brainstorming session. He urges, “Sky’s the limit. Think big. Think breakthrough. Think unconventional.” Here’s an unconventional alternative to the traditional lecture course that could be called, DiversiSections. It’s a very specific type of online course that would be disseminated nationwide. It dovetails with MIT’s making all its syllabi available nationwide, the recommendations in a new book, Disrupting Class, by Harvard professor Clayton Christenson, and with Carol Twigg’s work at the National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT). Their research and a priori arguments suggest that DiversiSections would be particularly beneficial for diverse student bodies and for students who don’t do well in lecture-centric courses. What is a DiversiSection and how might one be developed? Let’s take for ex
