The Teaching Problem

The advent of artificial intelligence will change education, but it will not change the fundamental educational equation: Learning is a product of what students do. As Charles William Eliot wrote over a century and a half ago, “A mind must work to grow.” Add AI to lecture and you have a prescription for disaster. But engage students in active learn... See more

Carl Weiman received the Nobel Prize in physics in 2006. He has devoted much of his attention since to raising the standards of science teaching.

There is another reason why the evaluation of research is a serious process, and the evaluation of teaching is not. In the realm of faculty research in any given discipline, there are explicit criteria for excellence. In the realm of teaching, by and large, there are no such criteria.

Student evaluations do not show that the best scholars are the best teachers. And when the claim that teaching and research are “mutually reinforcing” has been tested it has been squashed like a bug by a large volume of evidence. In 1996, four years before President Duderstadt addressed the topic, John Hattie and Herbert Marsh conducted a meta-anal... See more

Particularly interesting was Freeman and colleagues’ finding that “active learning confers disproportionate benefits for STEM students from disadvantaged backgrounds and for female students in male-dominated fields.” This suggests there may be a way of addressing a problem with which higher education has been unsuccessfully grappling for years—how ... See more