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Do It First, Then We’ll Talk

  • philosophy
  • university
By michael lee ⋅ September 15, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

This semester marks a pretty radical shift in my teaching. I’m adopting two new philosophies for each of my courses, rearranging lecture content and schedules, changing project parameters, all around two new principles.

The first is simple. I’ve made it a goal to never “lecture” for more than 20 minutes at a time. At the 20 minute mark, I stop, and we do something else. Either a class discussion, or a small project, or a break, something else. I’ve been on a steady diet of TED talks for the past 12 months, and I’ve been trying to capture the power of that strict time limit, the intensity of a well-crafted 20 minutes. I think it represents the upper limit of my students’ attention span, and rather than fighting it, I’ve decided to embrace it and use it to my advantage.

The second principle is more fundamental, and for me much more difficult. Most of the time, my thinking moves from principle to extrapolation. Once I learn the structure of MIDI messages, I can then move on to figure out how you might use them to deliver different kinds of musical information, how you might edit or filter them, a whole host of ideas can follow out of understanding that underlying principle. I organized my classes along similar lines, first teaching all of the core principles of a field of study, and then putting them into practice in the back half of the semester with projects. The result was that I bored my students to death in the first 6 weeks of the semester, bombarding with stuff that I knew was important, but that they really didn’t care much about.

I’m flipping that around this semester. I’m following a “do first, understand later” plan. In music technology, that means getting students to record and mix something the very first week, before they have any clue what they’re doing, and waiting until November before we even start getting into vocabulary, graphing, any of the more technical parts of the course. In Music & Ethics, it means pushing case studies to the front, and systematic moral philosophy to the back end.

I’m hoping that two things happen. First, I’m hoping to make some students more comfortable with unstructured progress, the ability to learn how to function with uncertainty. I’m coming to believe more and more that this is a critical skill to success in life, and something that they have not learned well to this point in their schooling. The skill used to figure out how to record a song with a piece of software without knowing “how it works” is the same skill set that they will later use to plan a semester of music classes, or produce a recording, the same skill set that will let them survive their first year of professional life, when they don’t know how anything works. The ability to jump into something with only a vague sense of how it works, and to emerge successful, is on the top tier of necessary skills for the professional musician.

My second hope is that it will spark a series of questions, that it will ignite curiosity in the students, and that the back half of the course, the systematic, academic, vocabulary and principles part of the course will become a series of answers to questions that they actually want to know the answer to. Instead of saying “this is a continuous controller message, here’s how it’s structured, memorize this, it’ll be on the test,” it will become “on those projects you’ve been working on, you kept using the mod wheel to change the sounds in interesting ways, here’s what you did, this is why it worked, here’s how you can use it to do other cool things, because it’s structured in this way.”

Basically, I’m trying to trick my students into being curious about the things that I think they should know.

I’m interested to hear from those of you who are teachers, in any capacity. What do you think about these ideas? Any of you go through big upheavals in how you view learning, based on your own experiences? Am I being hopelessly optimistic that these changes will make a difference in how my students learn?

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Discussion

42 comments for “Do It First, Then We’ll Talk”

  1. Dude. I am SO ripping you off. What an awesome approach… the “do first, explain later” approach.

  2. And then I’ll approach from the side, with an approach they’ll never expect to approach them.

  3. Surprise attack from the side… like velociraptors.

  4. That sounds very approachable.

  5. But seriously, it SOUNDS like a good idea. Could be frustrating for those with zero experience, but I agree that half of being successful is knowing how to “fake it”.

  6. All I can say is that your optimism is 2-0…why not swing away….

  7. I like how much you love your job, Mike. I’d guess it translates to the students (a little more than a calculated approach) and I feel that you’re already equipping them to be successful. The people in my world who are most successful at music are forward thinking, optimistic, and upbeat. You inspire me, and I’m not in any of your classes.


  9. gay.

  10. yup. Kinda pissed that I can no longer edit comments. I woulda deleted most of it. My blocking gnomes are blind to the extra gay stuff, I guess.

  11. The longer I teach, the more I am convinced that the joy must come first. All great ideas! Go, Mike.

  12. I’m just kidding, Corey. I love you, man.

  13. I think first and second grade can be a lot like college :) It is always a good idea, no matter what the age, to keep your listener engaged. The mind/brain can really only concentrate on a single thing for a short period of time. When you’re 6 that’s like 5 minutes, when your 18/19 hopefully 20 minutes. (no, not a single scientific/proved fact stated above). So I think you’re on the right track.

    In elementary school we’re trained on the different learning styles and how to vary our teaching and approach to reach all styles and modes of learning. Tactile, auditory, visual etc. I think this approach gets lost starting in Jr. High and High School and is definitely gone by college. Yet, those same students are still the same “type” of learner later in college. I totally get something better if I can see it done, or get to do it myself. Just hearing about it, doesn’t work for me.

    So blah blah blah, go Mike!

  14. Or,

    You can just use the Official Chad Method, which is do first… then never really understand what you did.

    Works like a charm!

  15. Hey Chad…me too!

    “Go Mike” reminds me a little too much of the “Go Meat” campaign.

    My art profs in college were all for this teaching technique. By one’s junior year, ya kinda got it and would dive in, clueless. Freshmen though…oh my. Walking into a Drawing I class full of freshman was like walking into some kind of torture chamber filled with angsty robots. Stiff arms, stiff faces, barely muffled crying, and the exasperated profs yelling things like “Movement people…MOVE YOUR WHOLE ARM! If I see one more person moving ONLY their wrist while they draw, I am outta here!” And yes, they often would stomp off to their offices, leaving the extra-clueless freshmen weeping into their charcoal.

    Good times, good times.

    Oh, this wasn’t about me…uh…yeah…Go Meaty Mike!

  16. I agree, I really respect you being willing to try something new in your teaching. This is one of the same reasons that I teach my elementary/middle school kids to get a sound out and start playing their instruments before I begin introducing theory.

  17. In my husband’s first-day-of-band powerpoint, he includes that “you will sound like a dying farm animal” (big cow face looking at you). And, that fifth graders are more excited to sound bad than high schoolers are to sound good.

    Joy first. Theory second.

  18. Oh man, I love that phrase. “Joy first, theory second.”

    You know, it never occurred to me until just this moment how much becoming a parent has started to inform my teaching. Huh. More to ponder.

  19. Aaaaah. I miss my farm animals! I actually miss 25 violins screeching like fingernails on the chalkboard with smiley faces behind them. I am with Sharolyn! “Joy first, theory second.”
    Go Mike!!!!

  20. This is pretty brilliant.
    GREAT thoughts…

  21. Ok, so in all seriousness….

    The funny thing was that my experience in Theory 1 was that it was like all of these sounds that I already “knew” all of a sudden had a name, and explanation. It was like the lights came on.

  22. And then, when we got to Theory IV, all of the sudden all of the names and explanations produced sounds that nobody could have possibly done on purpose, or would ever want to hear again.

    Serialism my a**.

  23. Indeed. (What Chad said.) Another perk to this approach is that it can be a huge ego boost to the students who have some amount of intuitiveness going on. I remember a prof admiring one of my first paintings that he had required we complete using only two colors. He slapped my piece up on the wall and said “Anyone here see what she managed to create that no one else did?!” (I probably remember this because it may be the only time an art prof said something so positive about my work. The art profs thrived on being harsh and accusing.) We all did (it was a fairly true gray that I had managed to get via mixing…true gray can be hard to come by, as it turns out.) I recall literally starting to sweat as I thought to myself “Oh dear God, please don’t let him ask me HOW I did that…cuz’ I have NO IDEA!” Then he went on to explain to everyone how I had done it. I was probably the one MOST thankful for the explanation.

    All this to say, yes, I think you’re onto a good plan Mike. Also, having your students do this will give you/them a built-in “before and after” display of where they started and what they’ve learned by the end of the semester. That’s always an ego boost for anyone!

  24. Uh-oh. Baton down the hatches, we’ve been linked to from another biggie. The blog may slow down a bit for the rest of the day, sorry.

    http://blog.ted.com/2008/09/teaching_on_the.php

  25. [...] Lee att han ändrar sina musiklektioner denna höst på två sätt. Dels talar han aldrig mer än 20 minuter i sträck och dels låter han eleverna göra först och [...]

  26. Wow, what a compliment to Mike.

  27. Um, honey, you’re kind of a big deal now.
    shoot. Are you going to make us start calling you Master Lee again?

  28. O! M! G!

  29. I taught a class over the past summer (intro to engineering for 11th-12th grade students) while using curiosity as the main motivator (throw people in to the point they are almost overwhelmed, then stimulate the curiosity that usually flows). This open ended approach seems to work well if you have motivated students without too many standards to keep up with.

    Best wishes for your experiment!

  30. “Um, honey, you’re kind of a big deal now.
    shoot. Are you going to make us start calling you Master Lee again?”

    Gretchen,

    Just shot coffee out of my nose!

  31. I never stopped. People just don’t obey me like they used to.

  32. Gretchen,
    Tom tried to get us to call him Maestro!
    I feel your pain!

  33. [...] Do It First, Then We’ll Talk | Addison Road. [...]

  34. Wait….I’m supposed to be curious about what you teach me?

    AND ask questions?

    oh man…this college thing is too hard.

  35. Great idea; it’s an illustration of variation theory. Links to more on that at http://www.doceo.co.uk/reflection/2008/09/on-new-academic-year-resolutions.htm

  36. @Pauline

    Nah, general apathy and slovenly thinking are totally sufficient.

  37. [...] forgetting a semester removed. I read something from a professor I think a canadian school, he said “Joy First Theory Second”. And forgive me for saying this but in eee its, “Theory First, Your lucky if you find [...]

  38. Hi Michael,

    I’m neither a teacher or a musician. But I am an adult student currently, the most ‘adult’ one in the class, if you know what I mean. If only all the instructors I’ve encountered could heed this advice and incorporate it to the best of their ability. Four hours of lecture in medical/anatomical terms is enough to make anyone apathetic and slovenly in their thinking, regardless of age.

    The nod from Ted is what brought me here and well deserved. This is a really good approach, especially for educators of the youngest minds. I think if it were implemented, there would be nothing but brilliant minds emerging from schools, for they all started out that way in the first place. If only I were six again and could have a do-over!

    Great job, really.

  39. Well, checking in after a few weeks, and the “do first, understand later” approach has worked pretty well in the music technology course, not quite as well in the Music Ethics course.

    In music tech, there are still some students who just clearly don’t want to be there, and they sneer or snore the whole time. Nothing I can do about that, although I almost asked one girl to leave yesterday. Nothing I can do will light up everybody, but this new method has a lower miss rate, I think.

    I’ll be interested to see how the first exam goes. If the projects are any indication, they should do pretty well.

  40. Dear Michael,
    Your idea is solid. I work for a language training company. Our situation is like yours but compressed into 40-minute blocks of time. Think of it as a micro-semester.
    In a lesson, we use the following pattern; fail, present, practice, perform, perform again. This pattern allows us to learn where the student weak points are and then challenge them accordingly and allowing them to fail. Then we show them how to do it in their own way. This last part is how we make it learner centered. If it is not, the meaningfulness will be missing and the chance for long term retention is greatly reduced. Before the end of the lesson, we perform the main task one more time and ask for questions from the student.

    Good luck with your class!

    Kind regards,
    Matthew

  41. I love it. I’ve been teaching for 8 years and coached for 7…the more I enter my classroom the more I want to run it like a “practice”. The students need to be DOING and having FUN not listening to me blather on! They need DO. They need variety. They need practice. Just like I do when I learn.

    I think the TED style 20 is brilliant and it’s ramifications on the rest of the logistics is also SO important…everything from the rest of THAT class period to just how many hours should a course be??? How does that change BIG schedules??? I hope you can keep us abreast of noticed changes both big and small!

    Good Luck!

  42. [...] just finished grading Intro to Music Tech mid-term exams from the inaugural class of the new “Joy First, Theory Second” teaching method. The results were … [...]

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