Interactive Lecturing

CHAPTER 1Lecture versus Active Learning: Reframing the Debate

Educators today would be hard-pressed to identify a teaching technique more heartily maligned than the lecture. Lectures are boring: “Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep” (Albert Camus¹). Lectures are ineffective: “A lecture is a process in which information passes from the notes of the lecturer into the notes of the student without passing through the minds of either” (Mark Twain²). Lectures are pointless: “Lectures were once useful; but now, when all can read and books are so numerous, lectures are unnecessary” (Samuel Johnson). Lecturing is currently considered to be so bad that one author imagines a future when universities are required ...