Would College Students Retain More If Professors Dialed Back The Pace?
Paula Marantz Cohen
In a case of literary serendipity  right after I read Beck's piece  I stumbled onto an essay called "The Simplest Course I Ever Taught" in The Chronicle of Higher Education by Paula Marantz Cohen  dean of the Pennoni Honors College and professor of English at Drexel University.
 Cohen  describes  her  embrace of "slow teaching " an approach that designs a college course to "look closely â and by extension  slowly â at one major idea or text over the course of ten weeks."
Though the focus of  Cohen 's essay is a one-credit course  she  developed that "took the slow teaching approach to a new level" â  she  read aloud Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice to her students  and they discussed the plot and characters together â  she  explains that the honors program  she  heads offers a whole set of slow-taught courses. One of them focused on Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species  an indication that science as well as the humanities is involved.
A deliberate change on professors' part from trying "to cram in as much material as possible over the course of a term " Cohen suggests  brings benefits to the students. "I am convinced that key concepts and texts will adhere better to memory and understanding if their presentation is slowed down "  she  says in  her  essay.
Given what I wrote here last year about celebrating intellectual engagement on college campuses  it's no surprise that I'm convinced by  Cohen 's points. I'm not a skeptic about the slow-teaching approach.
Did  Cohen  have any thoughts on whether slow teaching would be as effective in the science as in the humanities?  She  replied  in part:
In a case of literary serendipity  right after I read Beck's piece  I stumbled onto an essay called "The Simplest Course I Ever Taught" in The Chronicle of Higher Education by  [TGT]   dean of the Pennoni Honors College and professor of English at Drexel University.
 Cohen  describes  her  embrace of "slow teaching " an approach that designs a college course to "look closely â and by extension  slowly â at one major idea or text over the course of ten weeks."
Though the focus of  Cohen 's essay is a one-credit course  she  developed that "took the slow teaching approach to a new level" â  she  read aloud Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice to her students  and they discussed the plot and characters together â  she  explains that the honors program  she  heads offers a whole set of slow-taught courses. One of them focused on Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species  an indication that science as well as the humanities is involved.
A deliberate change on professors' part from trying "to cram in as much material as possible over the course of a term " Cohen suggests  brings benefits to the students. "I am convinced that key concepts and texts will adhere better to memory and understanding if their presentation is slowed down "  she  says in  her  essay.
Given what I wrote here last year about celebrating intellectual engagement on college campuses  it's no surprise that I'm convinced by  Cohen 's points. I'm not a skeptic about the slow-teaching approach.
Did  Cohen  have any thoughts on whether slow teaching would be as effective in the science as in the humanities?  She  replied  in part: