Issue 2, Spring 1991

William A. McEachern, Editor

Two Cheers for Lecturing

Before the invention of the printing press, lectures represented the most efficient means of transmitting large amounts of information. Now that we have progressed to desktop publishing, perhaps we should ask why we continue to lecture so much. Well, we do assign readings in our courses, and most of us expect students to spend more time reading and working with the material than they do in class. Ideally, lectures expand on the required readings and bring them to life. Lectures can also be more selective than the readings and can focus on topics of special interest. With lectures, we can weave current events and local color from our college or community into the material.

Lectures are efficient ways of conveying a large amount of material; they are good at laying out facts, relationships, theories, and other material that must be presented in a logical sequence. Lectures are also live theater. They can convey our enthusiasm for the material, and the very process of going through an economic problem can show students how to think through the steps in a logical way. The lecture approach affords us maximum control of the class agenda; we can present material in any order we choose, and can encourage or discourage questions.

But lectures are not well suited for all topics, particularly issues involving value judgments. Moreover, the effectiveness of lectures depends on the effectiveness of the lecturer (let's face it, some lecturers need to work on their delivery). Finally, the typical student's attention span is said to stretch less than a half hour, so a fifty minute lecture loses many students along the way. In fact, there is no guarantee that students are thinking much even during the first half hour. Students can put their pens on automatic pilot to take notes while their brains go elsewhere. But we don't want our students to be note-taking machines. After all, if class notes were the only purpose of attendance, we could save everyone a lot of time by simply distributing our lecture notes and sending students home.

The big problem with lectures is that most represent one-way communication. In fact, students usually prefer lectures to other forums, such as class discussion, because lectures involve little student participation. Since students are often reluctant to ask questions, particularly in large classes, only the looks on their faces and the results of exams provide the instructor with feedback. By now, most of us can "read" our class through the unconscious body language students transmit. Some students feign interest when they are bored, but the ruse is easily unmasked (and most students make no attempt to conceal their boredom). Teaching is all the more challenging when facing a class of zombies. If this is your problem, you must mix up your delivery, get students more involved, ask questions, dance on the desk -- do something different because your current approach is not working.

Top                                                                                                                                                                                          Next