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'The Traditional Lecture Is Dead' (wired.com)
Rhett Allain, an Associate Professor of Physics at Southeastern Louisiana University, writing for Wired: What is the traditional lecture? It is a model of learning in which a teacher possesses the knowledge on a given topic and disseminates it to students. This model dates to the beginning of education, when it was the only way of sharing information. In fact, you occasionally still see the person presenting the lecture called a reader, because way back before the internet and even the printing press, a teacher would literally read from a book so students could copy it all down. Now, don't get me wrong. The traditional lecture model worked wonderfully for eons. But it is an outdated idea (free pass for adblockers). Close your eyes and imagine yourself in a college physics course with a professor giving a traditional lecture. Now open your eyes. Did you envision The Best Physics Lecture EVAR? I doubt it. You probably pictured someone droning on and on in front of a chalkboard or PowerPoint presentation. No way that is more engaging or interesting than an episode of The Mechanical Universe , and if you're a teacher who uses traditional lectures, just stop and play the show instead. Everyone will be better off. You may think by now that I think most physics professors are dolts. I promise that's not the case. But traditional lectures simply aren't effective. Research shows students don't learn by hearing or seeing, they learn by doing, a model often called active learning. Physics faculty should start thinking about how they can go beyond just a traditional lecture. There are some easy things they can do (or students can ask them to do) to make learning more engaging. First, make students read the book outside of class, rather than in class. If your lecture merely covers the material in the textbook, why make students buy the textbook? Now, you may put a different spin on the material, but still. You're merely repeating what students can read on their own. Let them do that on their own time, and use the classroom for experiments and demonstrations and so forth.
You need the lectures, the tutorials, the 1 on 1 time and a varied approch. All of these things happen now at the university where I work. There are all kinds of learning and activities put together in the LMS, online. The lecturer is still required and the subject mater expert and the lecture is part of effective modern learning. One thing though is to limit the length of the lecture and keep in mind that its not the whole story. However its far from dead - thats just click bait headlines.
Very good points. I just gave a lecture twice this week with very different outcomes. The first time, 80 or so people were fully engaged on a topic we all thought was important. The second time around with a different (and smaller) group it was all glazed over eyes. If I taught full time (or even just a lecture per month) I might be better at adapting, but I don't and I'm not.
I am still a huge fan of Socratic learning, but it really doesn't seem to work for a typical audience.
Problem is, there are lots of idiots who have actual pull in education who think that video lectures and flipped classrooms and such are amazing ideas that nobody has ever thought of and are sure to revolutionize education.
One of the insidious things about the recent online learning craze is that people actually like watching the educational videos. People like them, and report that they're learning a lot, so they do very well on the self-assessments. But in objective measurements they're terrible.