After years of experimenting with the small-seminar, large-lecture method of teaching, no department at Hillsdale College is pushing to adopt the method.
During three years of trials, the method has undergone serious revision. This involved gathering a select group of students together for a large lecture of about 50 students and then breaking the students into smaller groups of nine to 12 for a more personal seminar.
For a variety of reasons, the administration and faculty had decided to test this new teaching style, Dean of Faculty Mark Kalthoff said. Other schools have experimented with seminars, but administration and faculty wanted to see how this style would work firsthand at Hillsdale.
“Our object to get the small seminars has been to see what effect it has on the students in regard to student retention and student writing,” said Michael Jordan, Chairman and Associate Professor of English.
Each school semester featured a different angle of the seminar method. The English department experimented with new techniques to present information and changed thematic elements of organizing course material.
The number of students in the lecture increased to 150 students this year, which neither the students nor the teachers appreciated.
But now “the experiment has run its course,” Kalthoff said.
And as for the results?
“In general, students responded favorably to seminars and student writing was at least on par,” said David Whalen, Associate Provost and Associate Professor of English.
Despite the results, no department desires to change to the lecture-seminar method. Yet English professor Dan Sundahl has chosen to adopt it anyway.
“I enjoy the integrative approach, which is a modest description of what I’ve been trying to do,” Sundahl said. “A 50-minute large lecture and a 75-minute small seminar still leaves me with opportunity for one-on-one tutorial time in my office.”
Sundahl said since the lectures are more formal, they require more work. Yet he said he finds them professionally rewarding.
“For me, it’s been less a change in teaching style and more an opportunity to use Freshman Rhetoric and the Great Books as a broadly integrative course,” he said.
Additionally, though most professors will not continue to teach seminars, some said they have discovered the limitations and the possibilities of seminars and also found them refreshing, Whalen said.
“I learned that the seminars are more intense than an ordinary class and yet less tiring,” Whalen said. “How’s that for a paradox?”
Students also reacted favorably to the program, results indicate.
“I think there are good things that came out of it like the closer student-to-teacher ration time,” sophomore Robert Crouse said. “Generally, I liked it.”
Dan Sundahl will continue the program in the spring, Jordan said. Whether the program will continue afterwards is still uncertain.