Breaking out of the classroom

I think this is going to be a rant! Why are we still teaching in classrooms? Seriously why? Why do we sit young people down in straight rows facing a million powerpoint presentations of what's in the text book? And why do we do this in 3 hour blocks? I get the impression that most of them find this pretty boring and go to great lengths to avoid class at all cost. My most effective course for years took place largely in the canteen. (Granted that the small numbers on the course allowed this and the usual timetabling problems encouraged it.) As a group we dropped the terms class, classroom, lecture (particularly powerpoint) and essays, replacing such a traditional approach with business meetings, agendas, action points and budgets. Never mind what they learned - I learned stacks! Funny though the average for the module was 64%! So something must have worked. Right, when was the last time you were "in class"? How much did you learn? Okay - put another way - what percentage of time were you really taking in and understanding new material? How much of the class was covering what you should know by now, what was in the reading you should have done, and some sort of introduction to what is coming next and what tasks you should be doing next? Go back to VARK - how does a 3 hour class, delivered mostly from the board, appeal to any given learning style? The Visuals start looking out of the window, the Kinasthetics start texting or talking, the Aurals turn to their i-pods and the Read/Writes reach for their newspapers! Where do you learn best? In meetings? In a quiet room with a vast desk covered in books, journals and other research sources? Or, like me, by a PC, in an empty house, with the Kaiser Chiefs blaring out at a million decibels? Why do we expect students to be any different? (I just had terrible trouble embedding this video - thanks go to all the very helpful people on the blogger help discussion sites that I got there in the end.) So where is this rant going? Well to another posting concerning learning spaces and social/community learning.