Anyone Still Listening? Educators Consider Killing the Lecture

Teachers are wrong to assume that their role is to only convey information, and that merely saying the magic words will translate into learning for students, Lahey said. “Our students can access lots of information really efficiently now online, probably more efficiently than we could ever relay it,” he said. “So the added value of interactions with faculty should be talking through difficult concepts, refining difficult decision-making, and otherwise doing the challenging stuff that can’t be done with a laptop or phone. I try to structure lectures with that in mind.”

Studies show lecturing to be an effective tool for transferring information: for example, a 2011 study of classroom teaching methods performed by Guido Schwerdt of Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance and Amelie C. Wuppermann at the University of Mainz, Germany, found that larger amounts of class time lecturing increased junior high math and science students’ test scores over time spent on problem-solving activities.

One of Lahey’s main goals as head of Dartmouth medical school’s curriculum redesign is to incorporate more interactive work, what he calls the “evidence-based (and fun) teaching tools,” that he believes will revitalize medical school learning

Peer instruction was first introduced by Eric Mazur, the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University and Area Dean of Applied Physics, to his classes in 1991. Mazur, who found that this method helped students understand better, said lectures are much like musical concerts — they can still be appreciated, especially as a motivational tool. But what’s changed is that the lecture is no longer the only way to transfer important information.

Mazur’s method of peer instruction for physics classes involves two steps: first, he “primes the pump” by assigning reading or watching an online video of a lecture outside of class, and has students annotate the parts they had trouble understanding. Part two happens at the next class, when Mazur revisits concepts students stumbled over. “I say, here’s a question, think about it individually,” he said. “Then, commit to an answer, write it down on a piece of paper, or sometimes we use clickers, or handheld devices, or whatever. But here’s the crucial step: After you have committed to an answer, turn to the people around you, find a person with a different answer, and try to come to some agreement.”