
Lectures Aren't Just Boring, They're Ineffective, Too - robg
http://news.sciencemag.org/education/2014/05/lectures-arent-just-boring-theyre-ineffective-too-study-finds
======
doktrin
While substantive data is always nice, this has always struck me as a bit of a
"duh" factor. Lectures are omnipresent because they're _cost_ effective.
Pedagogical effectiveness is an afterthought.

Anecdotal :

Honestly, I'd go so far as to say that _teaching_ as a whole is an
afterthought, even (or especially?) at top universities. I work for a research
institution affiliated with a top CS school, and attend their classes
regularly. The quality of instruction and academic support in the undergrad
classes makes me _cringe_ for the students, particularly given the
astronomical tuitions demanded of them. Over-crowded (and un-recorded)
lectures are a staple.

~~~
sharkweek
Little freshman sharkweek back in '03, having gone to a small high school
(graduating class of ~70 or so) walks into his first class at the University
of Washington, Economics 201 (the first of the series).

The class is 700 people, in Kane Hall, literally 10x my entire graduating
class from HS.

After the first lecture, and with extreme naivety, I walk up to the professor,
Eugene Silberberg, and ask him when his office hours are in case I need any
help with the material.

The perplexed look on his face was probably the most memorable thing I
experienced my entire four years in college.

"Uh, go talk to your TA"

~~~
dublinben
It's pretty easy to avoid the enormous introductory level lecture classes.
Nearly every large university will grant credit for AP or CLEP exams towards
undergraduate level classes like Econ 201. These exams cost under $100 for an
entire course.

You can also find many schools offering these courses online, for a bit more
money. Transferring in a credit is painless.

~~~
valarauca1
> Transferring in a credit is painless.

Actually transferring college credits is one of the most painful things I've
done in my academic career.

~~~
Loughla
How long ago did you attend? Almost all states have made public colleges and
universities arrange transfer agreements to guarantee credits will transfer.
Most private, not-for-profits have taken up this cause as well. For-profits
are still a bit wonky with transferring, because their academic rigor tends to
be terrible.

Now, out of state transfers, that's another story.

~~~
Balgair
At UCLA and Cal, 30% of freshmen are out of state[0]. As you said, this is not
an easy thing to do to begin with. I don't think that these numbers hold as
high for other universities, but it's not 10 or 20 people at a school. It's
like 1/8 to 1/4 of the freshmen that may need to transfer credits.

[0][http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_25731300/uc-
nonresid...](http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_25731300/uc-nonresident-
students-increase-californians-admissions-slow)

------
spodek
I used inquiry-driven project-based learning --
[http://joshuaspodek.com/inquiry-driven-project-based-
learnin...](http://joshuaspodek.com/inquiry-driven-project-based-learning-
rocks) \-- to teach my class at NYU-Poly, "Entrepreneurial Marketing and
Sales" this semester.

Experiential learning rocks! I never want to go back to lecturing.

I had only recently learned of the teaching style, mainly from a K-12
education conference where I was the only university professor, which KQED
reported on -- [http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/03/can-university-
profe...](http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/03/can-university-professors-
benefit-from-k-12-progressive-teaching-tactics). After the conference I redid
the syllabus to replace lectures and texts with the students and I getting to
understand each other to connect the material to their lives to motivate them
and so I could help them create projects they'd care about because they'd be
connected to their lives.

The results:

\- The students loved the class.

\- Over half of them are continuing the class projects after the course ended.

\- Several reported me the best professor and the class the best class they
took.

\- The students are getting together to create a video about the class even
after it ended.

As much as I'd like to brag, the credit goes to the teaching style.

Engaging students with empathy and helping direct them to personal projects
connected to their lives works better than any lecture, at least in my
experience. It was a lot more engaging, fun, and educational for me too.

The core, to me, is to see the students as the most important consideration
and the content lower, the opposite of the lecture model. With the internet,
the students can find any information they want at any time. Lecturing wastes
their time. My value is in connecting with them, helping direct them, sharing
my experience, and holding them accountable -- more like a manager or
colleague in the world.

~~~
sheepmullet
How do you avoid having students stick to what they are familiar and
comfortable with?

How do you ensure students get a broad understanding of the subject?

In my experience the major difference between hiring self directed learners
and people who studied cs in college is the lack of breadth in self directed
learners. Great python/js/php web dev who has never heard of pointers or a
priority queue?

~~~
spodek
Great questions.

I can't speak on avoiding what they're familiar with generally, but my
strategy was to make the deliverable for most sub-projects a five-minute
presentation on their results to the rest of the class. I reasoned that
presentations are critical for marketing, sales, and entrepreneurship in
general, and that the students had very limited presentation experience so the
format would give them experience. Then I followed many presentations with
students meeting one-on-one to give advice to each other.

Public presentations with feedback are accountability tools that force them to
do thorough, quality work, to pay attention to each other, to see how others
tackle similar challenges, and to develop communication skills. Several of
them were scared to present at first but then reported improving presentation
skills as one of the most important parts of the class. They grew a lot in
that area.

I also made deliverables similar to real-world problems. I assigned them to
talk to people in the field, even experts in the field, which forced them to
prepare (I didn't just throw them to the wolves. We worked up to that by
having them practice with classmates and then friends and family to develop
their business communication skills).

Regarding breadth, I told them at the beginning of class something like this:
"Even the best salespeople learn sales their whole lives. Nothing anyone can
do can make you the worlds' best salesperson or marketer in one semester.
You'll always have more to learn. If you became the best, you'd probably keep
learning faster. My goal in this class is to develop in you the skill to
improve yourself by finding out what you need to know and learning it -- to
improve the slope of your learning more than the y-intercept."

The most important tool was having them act, not just listen or read. I can't
comment on how things will go for them in the future, but they've already hit
major business challenges and learned how to overcome them, like how to find
an expert in the field and get him on the phone. Each saw others do it. Their
barriers are lower. If they have depth without breadth and they need it, I
hope they'll figure out how to get that breadth. The class is only a semester
so we couldn't cover everything no matter what.

By the way, they weren't purely self-directed learners. I created the course
structure and they never worked more than a week without oversight.

Incidentally, I don't claim to have mastered inquiry-driven project-based
learning, only that it's gone great so far. I expect to keep learning my
skills in it forever. Part of why I'm posting at such length here is to try to
find or create community of people who work similarly. I saw how much the K-12
IDPBL community helps each other. I hope university IDPBL teachers do too.

------
skizm
Small point about the title: just because B is more effective than A doesn't
mean A is ineffective.

Also, I didn't read the original source, but I wonder how difficult it is to
get a class to be active participants in a lecture. I know plenty of people,
if given a clicker to answer questions in class, would either not do it, or
just click randomly (if it was required).

I think it is pretty obvious that getting students to actively participate is
the ideal, but I feel like a lot of teachers and/or professors have given up
on this strategy because it is more work on their part. If students don't want
to learn (a good amount of) teachers probably don't want to put forth the
effort to force them to.

~~~
Fomite
I don't know a single faculty member who has positive things to say about
clickers, even those who were optimistic.

~~~
nwhitehead
I'm a lecturer and I think clickers are great, for large classes especially.
Clicker questions and small group discussion about the answers gets students
thinking rather than just sitting there with eyes glazing over. It works well.
By giving a small amount of real credit to the answers you even get all the
slackers discussing the topic and arguing about which answer is right.

Technologically clickers are impressively easy to use as well, you just need
to put in slides with questions into the main presentation. The biggest
disadvantage is students who forget to bring their clicker or have endless
excuses about why they couldn't be in class on a certain day.

~~~
watwut
They seem unfair to me :). I learned most afterwards when I was sitting in
room alone and really learning. I was present at lectures wrote notes and all
that, but found it hard/uncomfortable to absorb it immediately or form an
opinion. I prefer to have time to think about material before being questioned
on it.

My grades were good, so I do not think it is the issue of me being incapable
of college level of learning.

I also usually managed to get enough participation points or answers or
whatever was necessary for the grade, but rarely felt that the whole thing
added something to my learning. It felt more like waste of time, especially
those parts when people asked or had comments only to show they are
participating.

------
grownseed
Back when I was at University, a lot of the lectures (and more generally
courses) felt like advertising platforms for the lecturers. We would follow
bland Powerpoint slides which would regularly point to particular chapters of
books, more often than not written by the lecturers themselves.

The slides would often be years old and would fail to adapt to common trends.
As for the books, the few updates they received each year seemed to be a way
for lecturers to force students to buy the new editions (e.g. page 10 becomes
page 20), rather than actual research updates.

This, to me, just feels like lecturers trying to get their money's worth. The
students have become secondary to the whole "education thing". I'm aware that
higher education systems are largely at fault, not just the lecturers, but one
would think integrity would have gotten the better of this odd machinery.

Unfortunately the problem seems even larger to me, we assume Education is this
linear, step-by-step thing, when in fact people learn different things at
different speeds, in very different ways. Lectures are only a symptom of
trying (and failing miserably) to normalize Education. It's the quote by
Einstein in all its glory: "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is
stupid".

~~~
Jormundir
I'm actually very optimistic for education in the near future. After taking
some Coursera classes, I'm confident a more personalized education is
completely attainable.

There are a lot of weaknesses to point at with the online education platforms
popping up, but I think those weaknesses minuscule compared to our
standardized brick and mortar structure we have today. Really the only thing I
find particularly lacking is a mentor. I don't need a person to lecture me in
person everyday for an hour, I just need someone to check in to make sure I'm
staying on track, or to point out a different area I might find interesting if
I'm bored with what I'm working on.

We really only need a few expert lecturers to build high quality online
classes. The 40 students to one teacher can be slightly modified by 40
students to one mentor, whose job is simply to make sure everyone is staying
relatively engaged. I don't think a teacher can effectively instruct a class
of 40 students, and it's wildly ineffective and inefficient. A trained mentor,
however, can make sure a group of 40 students are progressing on their own.
(The 1:40 certainly needs to be up for experimentation, but the point is I
feel online education can be a close fit to the general infrastructure of our
system today).

------
joeevans1000
Well, scientists and computer engineers are typically working on real world
problems, for which certain learning styles are better. I'm an engineer, so I
actually would agree with this article... for those domains.

For other areas, like theoretical physics and philosophy, however, the lecture
and the seminar are awesome.

So we need to be careful not to paint the world with an engineering brush.

~~~
mikevm
I agree.

I think that in Computer Science in particular you can completely move to
video recorded lectures. Some say that we need live lectures so that people
could ask questions, but from my experience, the questions asked during
lectures are usually inane (mostly stemming from the fact that the person
didn't pay attention) and could be answered by simply rewinding the video, or
looking something up online. At the worst case, you could always email the
professor/TA.

I guess the only thing being lost here is the social aspect of college where
you get to meet new people.

------
ZeroGravitas
Here's an article from 1981 lamenting that although the science was settled
and everyone agreed that lectures weren't any more effective than unstructured
reading, you couldn't get the people giving lectures to stop doing so,
generally for rather insipid reasons:

[https://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/ocsld/resources/20reasons...](https://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/ocsld/resources/20reasons.html)

 _" Disclaimer: The ideas, explanations and evidence which form the arguments
of this paper are not the outcome of years of esoteric study and hence
accessible only to professional educationalists. On the contrary, they are
readily available in popular paperbacks, notably in Donald Bligh's "What's the
Use of Lectures?" The evidence is not new. The arguments have been made
before. Only the continued prevalence of lecturing justifies the writing of
this paper."_

[...]

 _" Conclusion: I would not like to leave the impression that I feel that
there is no justification for ever lecturing. I lecture myself (though seldom
for more than fifteen minutes at a stretch and then seldom when written
substitutes are available). I believe there are circumstances when a well
structured, well paced, varied, lively lecture can be the most efficient
teaching method. But I do believe there is far more lecturing going on than
can reasonably be justified by the evidence concerning the efficiency of
lectures, especially bearing in mind the nature of the educational goals we
claim to be striving for. I believe this state of affairs to be largely due to
ignorance, attitudes, and institutional constraints, rather than to any
inherent virtues of lecturing which I have overlooked, and which everyone else
is privy to. I believe both institutions and validating bodies ought to be
asking serious questions about courses which appear to be based primarily on
lecturing as the dominant teaching method."_

------
pnathan
A good lecture has elements neither book, nor video, nor homework, nor group
discussion will have. It has the element of a knowledgable person
disseminating knowledge in a quasi- Q&A format guided by his knowledge and
experience.

------
findjashua
Personally, I think the Khan academy model is the future - watch lecture
videos at home, and work through problems in the classroom.

~~~
ghshephard
As one who has gone through about 100+ Khan videos, I appreciate them for what
they are - which is usually helping someone over a conceptual hurdle. I would
love it if someone were to take the next step, and create a more sophisticated
question bank than Khan has, which stresses your learning experience. The one
key issue with Khan is that it typically doesn't stress you, and as such, the
knowledge retained is usually fairly shallow.

~~~
nooron
StudyEdge (YC S13) is doing a great job with a similar service. They provide
Khan Academy-style videos with a live support system (on the FB app platform).
The videos + support system are meant to supplement university courses--
essentially acting as a web tutor. Their own supplementary question banks tend
to be deep and well designed.

I used the service to get through Calc 2 as an undergrad. I liked it so much
(went from a C+ to A student in math) that I went to work there the next
summer!

~~~
findjashua
Similar experience - I had a terrible professor for my LInear Algebra course
back in college and Gilbert Strand's lecture videos on MIT open courseware
were the only reason I passed that course (actually got a better grade than
other math courses).

------
mcphilip
I only found lectures especially useless after the shift to PowerPoint slide
dumps. I still think back fondly on the days where
English/History/Calculus/etc professors would write on the chalkboard while
lecturing. Something about the act of writing made each point seem more
important and easier to recall

~~~
sliverstorm
My favorites were the fusion between the two, (powerpoints for key formulas,
scribbling for explaining) especially with the professors that would mark-up
the powerpoint with a stylus and post them online.

------
Valseuss
I disagree. In my experience, the lectures are one of the primary reasons for
attending a university. For a lecture to be effective, the students will need
to have read the material that the lecture is taking on. Then, during the
lecture, they should see why they have read what they have and understand why
it is important, what the general implications are and so on.

For me, at least, a good lecture always brings together the assigned reading
material in a way that I cannot achieve alone. A good lecture makes things
click. Solving a thousand problems may also make concepts click, but a good
lecturer will reduce the time needed.

TL;DR: The point of a lecture is not to tell you everything, but to bring
together the material that you have already consumed and provide a different
perspective than the book you read.

~~~
crpatino
Yes, you are very right that it is what's supposed to be. The problem is that
most students don't want to read ahead and expect the teacher to provide all
material in class (and more recently, I am told, to provide class notes for
those unable to pay attention for more than 150 seconds in a row).

Then, teachers will plan to pander to that majority, so any student who does
what s?he is actually supposed to do will end up bored to tears with the so
called "lecture".

As a single data point, I was well known in undergrad school to sleep through
lectures, and be left alone because whenever woke up I ended up disrupting the
class plan by asking questions (which I had read about the night before) that
other students could hardly understand and care about even less. Then, I
suffered a lot through graduate school to get rid of my bad habits once I was
expected to attend to _real_ lectures.

------
regoldste
As someone who learns almost exclusively by reading, I've always been bemused
by the concept of lectures. I've never thought that a professor explained the
material better than the textbook or other reading materials that prepared us
for class.

To the extent that a professor is expounding on the reading materials--which
is what you are really paying for in college--by applying them or synthesizing
them, I think those lessons are often better taught through interactive
dialogues with students. I'm probably a bit biased from my experience in law
school, but I think the socratic method is a particularly strong pedagogical
technique, and could be effectively implemented in many undergraduate courses.

~~~
Fomite
As someone who learns far better by lecture, I've always been bemused by the
concept of textbooks. I've never thought that the several hundred dollars I
paid for a book got me nearly as far into a subject as listening to the
professor.

~~~
regoldste
I envy you for being so well-adapted to the traditional style of teaching :)
On the whole, most people learn better by listening or interacting or doing.
I'm certainly the exception in this respect. My brain processes information
much differently. It takes me 3x longer to process a sentence read aloud as it
would to just read it. Lectures felt like a huge waste of time.

But do you really think that a lecture can cover material as thoroughly as a
textbook? In my experience, lectures were supposed to cover part of the
material (perhaps some of the trickier parts), but could never be treated as a
substitute for reading.

~~~
Fomite
Well, at this point in my career, the lecture covers things not yet written in
textbooks ;)

But generally speaking, especially when you account for the probability that
"read the textbook" will result in me either grinding to a halt or just having
content slide off, I covered more in lecture.

Textbooks were useful for specific needs for depth, used much more like
reference works than a way to learn an entire topic.

------
chris_va
From the original paper: "The effect sizes indicate that on average, student
performance on examinations and concept inventories increased by 0.47 SDs
under active learning (n = 158 studies), and that the odds ratio for failing
was 1.95 under traditional lecturing (n = 67 studies)."

Averages are not a very comprehensive measure for efficacy in a teaching
environment. I am glad they included the failure rates too, but people here
should not be so quick to jump to changing out the entire methodology based on
two numbers. Different students learn differently, and ideally you would look
at the distribution in student performance for different balances of teaching
methods.

Having said that, they are onto something.

------
Morgawr
I think one important point to make is not only about the amount of knowledge
absorbed from lectures, but also the discipline and rigor in education.

A lot of comments seem to hail e-learning, remote videos, recorded lectures,
etc etc as the future of education, and it scares me if I have to be honest.
There is a very important difference between a self-taught student and one
that has undergone through formal education, and that is scientific rigor. Not
to say that a self-learned person is less knowledgeable or "worse", it's
obviously not true and there are always extremes, however actually attending
lectures, going through the daily (and sometimes boring) routine of grinding
through contents as explained in a boring way by your lecturer.. it's all part
of building your determination and character as a researcher.

More often than not I find self-taught people staying at a very shallow level
of knowledge, broad and generic, never digging through the details, going that
extra mile to properly master a subject in a structured and well-disciplined
matter.

In my opinion, that kind of education can only be achieved in a mentor-student
relationship and, especially, through formal lectures. Even by just being
around other people and interacting with the academic environment, it helps
abstracting to a higher state of reasoning.

PS: I only have experience in the scientific academia, not talking about other
branches like arts or philosophy or whatever.

~~~
grayclhn
I always find it educational to meet someone who lacks all of the
characteristics I think are crucial for success, but is still successful.

In that vein.... I probably attended fewer than 15% of all of my lectures, for
every class in undergrad (I was a math major; attendance didn't magically pick
up in my advanced classes either). I've also finished an MS in stats and a PhD
in economics (working on econometric theory, so... basically more stats) and
work as an assistant professor.

Now, I'm posting on HN at 1am instead of sleeping or working, so I certainly
lack discipline, but I don't think that "attending boring lectures as an
undergraduate" is the magic precondition that you seem to. :)

~~~
thesimpsons1022
I feel like the problem is that educational effectiveness is too much of a
personal thing that it is impossible to argue about. everyone learns
differently. I think it's important to note that most people are self driven
enough to learn on their own. I learn a lot in lectures. other people go to
lecture and goof off and then learn the material on their own later. truth is,
the smart kids will usually find a way to succeed no matter how they learn.
What we are trying to figure out is the best way to teach the masses. I also
think it's important to consider the sheer number of people trying to get an
education in modern times as opposed to the past where most students were
smart, privileged kids whose parents were probably decently successful.

~~~
grayclhn
>I feel like the problem is that educational effectiveness is too much of a
personal thing that it is impossible to argue about.

This may be true, but I definitely like reading the range of opinions on this
subject and I think it's helpful as an educator.

>I think it's important to note that most people are self driven enough to
learn on their own.

This is sadly not true, but I'm happy that you think it is!

~~~
thesimpsons1022
sorry I meant not self driven enough. haha.

------
bananas
Agree. I didn't go to a single lecture after 2 months at university
(electrical engineering). My TA was shit as well - was too tied up in computer
vision research and found us inconvenient. However we formed a club (5 of us
who actually gave a shit) to work through stuff as students. Rather awesomely
our digital electronics lecturer turned up after a couple of weeks and helped
us with stuff and had a weekly rant about how useless the other staff were. I
think we helped him vent too.

------
jayro
Here are some additional stories on the topic that are worth reading:

* Physicists Seek To Lose The Lecture As Teaching Tool [http://www.npr.org/2012/01/01/144550920/physicists-seek-to-l...](http://www.npr.org/2012/01/01/144550920/physicists-seek-to-lose-the-lecture-as-teaching-tool)

* At M.I.T., Large Lectures Are Going the Way of the Blackboard [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/us/13physics.html?pagewant...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/us/13physics.html?pagewanted=all)

* First-year physics course being transformed through experiment [http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2001/physics-1219.html](http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2001/physics-1219.html)

* The Tomorrow's College Lecture Series - Don't Lecture Me [http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/tomorrows...](http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/tomorrows-college/lectures/)

* Inventing a New Kind of College [http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/tomorrows...](http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/tomorrows-college/lectures/inventing-new-college.html)

------
skierscott
I can't find the journal article, but I saw an academic machine learning paper
that claimed our whole lecture system was inefficient and not optimal. Our
lectures are currently based off an old system, before all the technology now.
The game changed when we introduced computers/phones/tablets, but our method
didn't change.

Students don't have much to rely on to determine how well they're doing in a
class. Currently, we rely on practice problems. Often times, this feedback
loop isn't closed. If it is, it's possible to learn _where_ you went wrong,
but often times the solution manuals say "as an exercise for the reader..." or
have similar lines.

This paper was proposing to devise some test to determine how well a student
understood the material and suggest strategies to more easily solve the
problems (afaik at least).

Something I've noticed: we still rely on someone else relaying the information
to us. Who says there's who explains the concept better somewhere else? Can we
devise a method to have the student give their full and undivided attention
while incorporating the technology?

------
stonogo
This applies perfectly to every TED talk.

------
dramirez
I worked at one of the bigger MOOCs for a while and we knew that over 50% of
our paying customers never watched any of the video lectures they subscribed
to.

That's the huge flaw in MOOCs as they are now. You can put all the content in
the world online for free or not and most people won't watch or learn from it.
That's the critical flaw in the e-learning investments right now.

~~~
pyoung
Is that really a flaw? If I can learn better by reading books and then working
through problem sets, why bother with the lectures, especially if I am
strapped for time as many MOOC participants probably are. I am a huge fan of
MOOC's, I've probably attempted about a dozen and have completed about half.
So far the biggest reason for failing to complete a class has been time
constraints. If I am already familiar with the material (i.e taking the class
as a refresher) or don't find the lectures particularly engaging, I will still
'watch' the lectures, but play them in the background while I work on problem
sets or do other stuff. In my experience, most MOOCs have a healthy portion of
participants who are very familiar with the material, so it's quite possible a
good percentage of them are just using the problem sets as a way to refresh
their understanding.

Unless of course, you are insinuating that a majority of these people are
cheating (i.e. copying and pasting answers on HW's) I don't really see what
the big deal is.

------
temuze
Yes! Amen, brother!

Two years ago, Sal Khan and John Hennessy (president of Stanford), went to a
conference and talked about the future of education:
[http://allthingsd.com/20120531/how-do-credentials-change-
as-...](http://allthingsd.com/20120531/how-do-credentials-change-as-education-
goes-online-stanford-and-khan-academy-respond-video/)

They both concluded that lectures may not exist in the future!

Sure, there are such things as lectures that have oratorical brilliance, that
inspire students about their subject. However, for the most part, lectures are
just inefficient ways to get information across. With the Internet, we have
methods to get this information asynchronously, without requiring packing
everyone into a room.

Rather, the role of the teacher in the future will be supporting students.
That's where humans outshine computers - answering questions, tutoring,
understanding where students might be confused, etc.

~~~
VLM
"lectures may not exist in the future"

What would I listen to in my car streamed by bluetooth from my phone? Radio?
No way.

What might happen is someday, someone is going to record "The Ultimate verbal
explanation of a PDA automata" or whatever, and then for the next 500 years
that'll be The One that everyone listens to. It hasn't turned out this way in
books because of legacy analog media combined with desire of publishers to
maximize profits. Imagine if you could just download the Feynman lectures on
physics. Aspects are out of date, but still going to be better than the local
talent.

~~~
nickzoic
Imagine!

[http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/](http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/)

[http://www.openculture.com/2012/08/the_character_of_physical...](http://www.openculture.com/2012/08/the_character_of_physical_law_richard_feynmans_legendary_lecture_series_at_cornell_1964.html)

OK, so that's not quite everything but it is a pretty good start, and there's
lots of other stuff out there on the web.

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jonsen
_“Universities were founded in Western Europe in 1050 and lecturing has been
the predominant form of teaching ever since,”_

But the way professors are compensated has changed dramatically. In the early
times the students payed the professor directly. Per lecture. I.e. those
students who chose to attend and apparently got something of value.

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wil421
I can specifically remember dropping a Pysch elective I was required to take
simply because the teachers format was horrible.

One midterm one final, lectures everyday taken straight from the powerpoints
the publisher provided with the teaching edition, same with the tests. I'm
sorry but talking isnt teaching I can read the book word for word at home,
explain the concepts do some activities anything please! Most classes I got
A's in _and_ learned something had hands on activities in addition to the
lecture.

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ufmace
Very interesting because, for me personally, the further ahead I've gotten in
my career, the more I've realized that I really don't like lectures at all.
It's exceptionally rare for me to learn anything or even remember anything
from a lecture. Everything I've ever really learned has been from hands-on
work, with a book or online reference available. Perhaps some other people
learn from lectures, but I don't.

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skywhopper
Am I missing where they indicate what they mean by "active learning"? All I
see are references to clickers and asking individual students questions during
a lecture. Sounds like it's actually just a question of dull lecturing vs
engaging lecturing to me. Can anyone provide a summary of what "active
learning" means in this context?

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iamthepieman
This can't be a surprise to anyone can it?

They can be boring, entertaining, exciting, repetitive, straight-from-the-
textbook or enlightening but surely no one thought lectures were primarily
educational.

Good lecturers made me want to read the book, study the subject, experiment on
my own or do my best on assignments and labs. That's the purpose of the
lecture in my opinion.

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hajderr
In contrast, the method of pair discussions has been used for a long time in
the Islamic Seminars in Najaf and Qom. Which has produced highly effective
teachers, each one able to lead a lecture in every subject they take.

Maybe someone can highlight the teaching methods in other parts of the Eastern
world?

------
JamesArgo
I find it helpful (in a Zen-like way) to remind myself that civilization is a
massive patchwork of hacks.

~~~
tomsthumb
The result of thousands of years of meeting the local maxima.

