Fiction ‘brings lectures to life’ as academics face empty classes

Please explain to me: how can "fiction" or anything else "bring life to empty classrooms"? That's both a logical and physical impossibility. Empty classrooms are empty classrooms. Does that matter?

Great, now cementing being an entertainer as more important than being an educator further... We should rename 'Higher Education' to something else. If students who signed up for an education programme voluntarily are not interested in turning up to learn, what does it say about them? If we pander to this attitude, we wonder why recruiters find them unemployable. If they do not turn up and the blame falls on the educators for why, what does it say about the culture of education? Not cultivating personal responsibility among students. It's all about 'student experience' - experience of what? Fun and games?

We are in the edutainment industry these days - keep them happy and try to teach them something along the way is what its all about.

The best professors were always--always--entertaining while demanding. They did not separate the two. I write from more than one half century in higher education: an undergraduate in late 1960s, graduate student in 1970s, and a professor from 1975 on....

Teaching ethics to computer scientists, I've long made use of roleplay in class - based on the Epstein "Killer Robot" case study, the students are deputised by the local police department to investigate the death of Bart Matthews, an industrial robot operator, at the hands of his robot. I let them talk to any of the characters in the case study by playing a host of roles and answering their questions. Once, when a class happened to be on Halloween, they even asked to raise Bart and had a chat with his ghost! OK, it required a complete knowledge of the case study, and drew on 40-odd years of playing Dungeons & Dragons... but students loved it. One showed me, 2 years later when he was doing his final year project with me, a photo of an "evidence board" his study group had created as they worked out what was going on. It doesn't dilute academic content in the slightest. By capturing the students' interest, it makes it easier for them to grasp and retain information.