Expert Knowledge and Information Sharing in University Classrooms

“Every year I teach this class I get worse and worse at teaching it because it is increasingly harder for me to understand why students are unable to grasp the material.”

This is how my GSI started off our first discussion for my applied geophysics class. Of course, this got a good laugh from the discussion section, but after the snickers died down, he followed it up saying he was, in fact, serious—his first year it had been easy for him to understand the errors students were making and to help them through these problems . However, he was now in his fourth year of being a GSI and was now such an expert that he was unable to understand what was confusing us as students because the material seemed basic to him.

This brings up the interesting idea, that even though somebody may be one of the most intelligent people in their field, this has little relationship to how successful they are at teaching others about the topic they are an expert in. This can be an issue in educational settings such as universities and high schools. Over my past years at the University of Michigan, it has been quite clear to me that all my professors are incredibly intelligent and influential in their field of study. Many have done groundbreaking research and published important articles or books. Yet, among these professors, some stick out as being the most inspiring, influential, and effective teachers, while others left me confused and uninterested.

Many times I attributed my success and interest in a class to the success and effectiveness of the professor. However, the system by which college classes teach may also be part of the flaw. Providing opportunities for restoration and task switching are necessary for successful information sharing. In universities, information sharing generally takes place in the form of lectures—where professors  are not easily able to provide opportunities for restoration or task switching. Well-structured information is another guideline for effective information sharing, conversely, this is something that professors have control over and whether or not lectures are organized and presented effectively impacts how effectively students learn the material.

For this reason, I believe it would be effective for universities to implement more recorded lectures. Students would be able to watch these lectures online, and if they had trouble understanding or were experiencing directed attention fatigue, they would be able to pause the video and restore their directed attention by taking a walk, playing a game, watching a sporting event, or many numbers of other activities. Similarly, they would also be able to switch to a different task—another strategy for improving effective information sharing that is not possible in a typical 90-minute lecture.

While many people would not utilize this option, it would allow more flexibility in learning styles. Today, it seems more and more that schools only cater to one specific learning style, and do not do enough to recognize and provide alternatives for people who do not learn best in this one specific style. Having lectures recorded would provide students with more control over their learning and would benefit students due to its incorporation of more factors useful for effective information sharing.