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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 But it is an outdated idea (free pass for adblockers).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.
But traditional lectures simply aren't effective. Research shows students don't learn by hearing or seeing,
Speak for yourself, a good lecture reduces the time to learn for many. For me, I figure at least 2x. The interactions rapidly clarify areas of confusion.
A great lecture inspires.
Wrong.
Beyond Wrong.
"The Mechanical Universe", what the fuck I don't even.
Fuck off with your hipster pseudo-intellectualism. Here is a lecture on hydrostatic pressure by Walter Lewin. It is more interesting, more entertaining, and more educational than ANY of your pop-science crap. I don't care what privatised iCloud lecture service you are trying to hock, or your bullshit smear stories against Lewin either. The traditional lecture format is better than anything you can come up with with your cheap credit funding and fly by night websites and social media scam promotions.
Get the fuck out of of my fields. Get the fuck out of my hobbies. Get the fuck off the internet you anti-intellectual Hipster frauds!
The article (almost in full in the summary above) is making the argument against lectures that a lecture would just be repeating what the student has read on his own in the textbook.
Well, repetition is not necessarily bad. Facts stick if we can apply them, if we can associate them in new ways. A good lecturer does not simply repeat exactly what you read. If you are a good lecturer then you emphasize those things in the subject matter that are the most important and you do that from a slightly different angle than in the textbook. And you do use pictures, drawings, animations or other appropriate media that are not in the textbook - just as you would when making an educational video.
And if you hold a lecture then you should always devote a few minutes to questions. Getting a question cleared up can be all the difference for someone.
If you think lecturing is droning on then you are just a lazy professor.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
This type of response is why education in the US is off the rails. You extrapolate your response to learning via YouTube to the entire student population. Students learn differently. Some respond to visual learning methods. Some to auditory methods. Some respond best to experiment. The point being, instructor input is vital. During a lecture, the instructor can see the "deer in the headlights" look, and adjust the instruction style and content appropriately. Videos can't do that. Self-study only works with brilliant, entirely self-motivated individuals, and those are rare indeed.
Research shows students don't learn by hearing or seeing, they learn by doing, a model often called active learning.
We called it homework.
If your lecture merely covers the material in the textbook, why make students buy the textbook?
That's why I never did.
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.
They're called "labs". Learning from reading a textbook alone is hard. It requires discipline, focus, and hard work. If it were easy, we'd have no need for University courses. That's why we have professors who go over it in class, so you can ask questions and have the obscure parts explained to you, and the students who lack the drive to study the book on their own time (most of them) can still learn the material.
In my experience, students mostly prefer the reverse: learn the material in class, apply the material in homework after class.
Learning a new subject is hard work. Classes are there to make the work less hard. Seeing movies and experiments isn't making it less hard, it's just entertainment.
Speaking as a physics professor who has tried many of these new techniques - I've done video lectures which are up on YouTube, in-class tutorials, clickers etc. - I get really annoyed by this type of hyperbolic promotions of them. Technology has indeed given us some better ways of doing things and in that the OP is right that we should explore and use them. However, somethings are best taught in the more traditional lecture format and frankly, when I was a student myself we were all supposed to read around the subject - not just limited to reading the textbook but other books too - as well as attend the lecture so this is hardly a "new idea".
In particular one of the things I have noticed with many of these new techniques is that they communicate far less information and those using them often have to take material out of a syllabus. They then compare this to the original lecture and it is no surprise that they find that students learn the material better. However if the original lecture format was repeated with the same reduced syllabus and far more time on each topic I expect that this too would get better results if for no other reason than students have less to revise for the exam.
So please let's not start the irresponsible hype that old lectures are dead just because we have an arsenal of new techniques. Some of these techniques may have disadvantages over the "old" lecture style particularly when it comes to the amount of material covered which, for a subject like physics, is extremely important because it has a more linear nature until you get to the final undergrad year. Plus some of the new techniques are grossly unfair since they award marks for a group and not individuals which means it can be heavily influenced by how lucky you are with your group members.
A good lecture isn't about taking notes down by dictation, or by copying them verbatim from a blackboard.
The notion that if its in the books we can just read it on our own is idiotic... the minute we have a question we have to stop... continuing further just leaves us confused. Reading the book as prep for the lecture is good. Reading the book afterward as review, and for study and reference is great. But if you think a lecture is just the professor reading the book, then you've missed the point of lectures completely.
There's a few dimensions to this that are important.
First, not everyone is a verbal learner. Some pick up concepts much easier from reading than listening. Sometimes a book diagram can enlighten much better than any hand-drawn diagram on a chalkboard; of course, the professor has the upside of of being able to adapt the drawing based on questions. So really, the two go hand-in-hand. I've actually always felt the opposite of you: the lecture gets me excited about things I should pay attention to, but I don't really understand it until I read the book and do some problems. Your line about getting confused is exactly me in lecture; if I have a question about the lecture but the professor moves on (which often the professor has thought he answered my question, and maybe even I did too), then the rest of the lecture can leave me a bit confused until I read the book later. It's a style difference I think, not making judgments because I don't think either way is "better".
Second, I suspect it depends a bit on the topic. It's difficult to understand a mathematical proof in a textbook for the first time simply by reading (often you need an expert to walk you through it), but there are other subjects that are well-suited to simply reading.
Third, we must separate the ideal from reality. A good lecture will inspire and be very dynamic based on questions and feedback from the students. However, I had several professors at my alma mater Big State University that would walk into class and flat out tell the students "I didn't want to teach this class, I'd rather being doing research, but the chair said I had to". As you can imagine, some professors look at lecture as something you just get through... and yes, they tend to regurgitate textbooks. Even when the professors care, if they wrote the textbook, they're a little partial to that style of presentation obviously and so will mirror much of the material in the book.
So much information is online now (or in books) that it does seem easiest to read books or watch videos outside of class, then use your class time with the expert in the field (the professor) to clarify questions. It's good to have someone walk you through the problems until you get it. Lectures - in video or book format - don't usually do that, instead leaving examples to the reader, which is what really misses the point.
Remote courses were going to replace classwork. Doing was going to replace learning. Write less, do more was going to solve everything
Stop deluding yourself. Monkeys are smarter than us. We are social learners who learn by: reading, hearing and doing. Different people do it differently but we all stand on the shoulders of giants.
It is STUPID to state everyone learns physics by doing. Having actually TAUGHT physics, I can tell you have had to demonstrate for some, explain for others and write on the board for yet others.
Everyone's mode of learning is equally valid. And for some, the traditional lecture is just fine.