Please Stop Blabbing: Prescription for Verbal Diarrhea

Abstract

Higher education can be seen as a “gateway” to entering professional careers (Rubenson, 2010), yet the teaching and learning practices used in the classroom may not always prepare students for their futures the way instructors intended, one example is the use of student participation to increase interaction and learning in the classroom. Although verbalizing thoughts can help students learn, students in this study felt they were more often rewarded for frequency of their contribution instead of quality of their contribution which challenges its intended use. They called it “verbal diarrhea” and explained how prominent it was in their university learning experiences making the learning environment not only disengaging and a practice they dreaded but also unrealistic to the real world setting. However, in the Active Learning Classroom (ALC), students noticed verbal diarrhea was significantly reduced and for the most of the time non-existent, and made their learning more authentic (Herrington, Reeves, & Oliver, 2014). This paper presents case studies of students’ lived experiences in their undergraduate degree, and their “prescriptions” and recommendations to instructors and other students on avoiding verbal diarrhea and encouraging meaningful discussions facilitated by the learning environment.