VOA慢速英语:Lecture or Interactive Teaching? Old Issue, New Study

Professors have lectured for centuries. But how is lecturing to students compared to working with them?
教授们几世纪来都在讲课。但是，相比于互动式教学，讲课能起多大作用呢？

A new study compared two classes of a beginning physics course at the University of British Columbia in Canada. There were more than two hundred sixty students in each section. Both were taught by popular and experienced professors.
一项新的研究对加拿大英属哥伦比亚大学两个班级开始上物理课的情况进行比较。每个班级有超过260名学生。都是由著名和有经验的教授讲课的。

The study took place for one week near the end of the year. One class continued to be taught in the traditional lecture style. The other professor was replaced by two teachers. They had little teaching experience but received training in interactive teaching methods. The training was led by Carl Wieman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who leads a science education program.
这个研究在年底花了一个星期时间进行。一个班级继续采用传统的讲课模式，而另一个教授则由两名老师代替。他们几乎没有教学经验，不过接受了互动教学方法的训练。这个训练是由进行一个科学教育项目的诺贝尔物理学奖得主卡尔．威曼指导的。

There was almost no lecturing. The teachers put the students in small groups to discuss and answer questions. They gave them readings and quizzes to finish before class so they would come prepared to discuss the material.
上课时几乎没有讲课。老师们将学生分成小组进行讨论和回答问题。课前他们先给学生提供阅读材料和需要完成的测验，以便他们上课时准备好进行讨论。

Professor Wieman says before the experiment with these and other activities, test scores for both classes were the same.
威曼教授说，进行这些实验和其他活动前，这两个班级的成绩是一样的。

CARL WIEMAN: "There was a great deal of careful data collected showing how identical the two sections, these two large sections of the class were beforehand. And this focused very much on looking at exactly what could be learned with the different methods from the classroom experience, the time when you have the maximum instructor interaction, or face-to-face interaction time.”
卡尔．威曼：“大量收集的精确数据表明两个班级是一摸一样，这两个大班级是预先安排的。这个研究特别集中于准确观察从课堂经验，跟教师互动最多的时间，或面对面的互动时间这些方面来说，这两种不同方法可以学到什么。”

Afterward, both classes took the same test. Students in the interactive class scored nearly twice as high as those in the traditional class. Attendance also increased that week.
后来，两个班级进行同一个测试。互动式教学班级的学生获得的分数比传统班级学生的分数高了将近两倍。出勤率在那一周也提高了。

Graduate student Ellen Schelew was one of the teachers. She says the methods they used are designed to encourage students to think like scientists.
毕业生Ellen Schelew是老师之一。她说他们使用的这个方法是为了鼓励学生像科学家一样去思考而设计的。

ELLEN SCHELEW: "Their brains are turned on. They’re thinking hard and they’re really working through these problems. So even if they don’t have enough time to complete a given problem, they are prepared to learn from the instructor feedback that always follows groups’ tasks."
Ellen Schelew：“他们的大脑被激发。他们认真思考并真正克服这些问题。所以即使他们不够时间克服给定的问题，他们也准备在小组任务后从老师的反馈中学到知识。”

The study appeared in May in the journal Science. It seems to confirm earlier findings about lecturing to large classes. But some experts have criticized the way the study was done.
这项研究发表在五月份的《科学》杂志上。它看起来是要证实早期关于大班级讲课的调查结果。但是一些专家批判这个研究采取的方法。

Both of the researchers who taught the class, Ms. Schelew and Louis Deslauriers, were also authors of the study. This could raise questions about whether their involvement might have influenced the results.
给这个班级上课的两名研究人员Schelew小姐和Louis Deslauriers也是那篇论文的作者。这就造成了疑问——他们的参与是否影响了研究结果。

Professor Wieman is currently on leave from the University of British Columbia and the University of Colorado. He is the associate director for science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
英属哥伦比亚大学和科罗拉多大学的威曼教授现在正在休假。他也是白宫科技政策办公室副主任。

He says research has shown better ways to teach based on evidence about how the brain learns. And he hopes more professors will learn that how someone teaches may be more important than who does the teaching.
他称这个研究已经以大脑如何学习的证据为基础表明了更好的教学方法。而且他希望更多教授能明白，一个人如何教学比谁在教学更重要。