I clicked on the icon and found a group of 19 courses (only 3, I noticed, taught by women), and the following caption:
What makes these educators among the best on iTunes U? By creating innovative, groundbreaking approaches to their subjects, they inspire students of all ages to learn something new. (emphasis mine)The weird thing is that I'm in the middle of taking on of the courses on the list. I'm really enjoying it. The course is called The Hebrew Scriptures in Judaism and Christianity, and it's taught by Shaye Cohen at Harvard. It's a great course, and I recommend it to anyone who's interested in the history of Christianity and/or Judaism. But the one thing that's striking to me is that I wouldn't characterize Dr. Cohen (obviously, I'm only judging on the basis of the lectures of this one course) as particularly innovative. And I mean that in the nicest way. Based on the lectures I've listened to, I'd say the opposite: he's an enthusiastic, interesting lecturer the way that good professors at universities have been for literally hundreds of years. His teaching style is pretty similar to what mine was when I was teaching at the university level (except that he's much better at it-I'd like to think I'd have been like him as a tenured professor).
Dr. Cohen is a bit of a goofball--he tells corny jokes about his subject matter, and you can see that he tells them every year and looks forward to telling them every year. He pokes fun in a low key way at the students for not talking or asking questions in class, and for not being as enthralled with his material as he is. He pokes fun at himself for being so absorbed in something his students don't always see the point of. He gives students little glimpses of the world of academia that's behind the articles they read...this man was a Methodist minister. This author went to Harvard, like you. This guy wrote a huge Biblical concordance in the days before computers and databases, just by reading every single Biblical translation himself. He grumbles at the students good-naturedly (or sometimes slightly less good-naturedly) for not doing their readings, for not being interested in the guy who wrote the huge concordance, for not answering easy questions. And above all, he's excited. He clearly really loves the material he's teaching, and he's totally into it and fascinated by it. He's also able to articulate the material in a way that other people understand, which is not always the case with enthusiastic people. But the thing is, students get drawn in by teachers who are excited. (I know this was the one positive comment I consistently got on student evaluations at every university I taught at). It's hard to totally resist some one else's absorption in their subject matter, even if you're a freshman who'd rather be studying for your econ test.
The thing is, what he's doing isn't innovative (except, I guess, insofar as it's on iTunes). It's good lecturing, the way good lecturing has been done at elite universities for a long time. But what's wrong with that? I feel like reformers and technology companies spend a lot of time telling teachers that they need to be "innovative," or that whatever it is that will make their companies money is "groundbreaking." (I notice that things teachers actually do to change their classrooms in positive ways in the public school system are almost always put down or quashed -- it's only innovative if a private company does it or endorses it. Like they say, if a teacher had done the exact same thing Khan Academy is doing before Khan Academy, it would have been "maintaining the status quo.") But why does "innovative" have to be a substitute word for "great"? Why not just say, the people on this list are outstanding teachers because they're inspiring? Because they can get people interested even when they weren't at first? But that doesn't require technology, I guess. There's nothing that big business likes less than admitting that the "little people," regular citizens, can do something well without them.
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