Dive Brief:

• As colleges and universities look to embrace online learning, the role of face-to-face interaction cannot be ignored.

• However, with the trend towards online learning, traditional brick-and-mortar instruction should do away with the 50-minute lecture, experts say, focusing class time instead on a more interactive, conversational and collaborative approach that highlights engagements that are difficult to achieve online in order to hold students’ attention.

• More than any other skill, writing still requires quality in-person instruction. With much of the content able to be taught online, writing instruction should get more attention in in-person settings.

Dive Insight:

Today’s students have a six-to-ten minute attention span away from screens and devices, said James E. Ryan, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education during a conversation on the digital future of education at the New York Times Higher Ed Leaders Forum in New York this week.

This means professors have to be able to deliver quick bits of interaction at a time. To keep students engaged in learning, delivery methods must change and students must be encouraged to interact with the material and each other in ways that connect them to it.

“'Makerspace' is just a modern term for project-based learning,” he said, adding embracing this teaching style in today’s classroom is “a part of good pedagogy.”