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Showing posts from October, 2016

Calls to abandon the lecture

Should higher education abandon the lecture? Prominent proponents of active and student-centric learning at University have called upon university leadership to act to ban the lecture. The argument is that we now know that there are better teaching and learning approaches, and that it is ethically indefensible to continue to educate drawing on the more traditional lecture based model. There is indeed convincing research that supports the claim that active learning in a student-centric environment can increase pass rates and help mid-range students to achieve better academic results. This conclusion is drawn based on research that demonstrates that there is a statistically significant improvement in the grades of that segment of the student cohort in large class settings.  However, the situation is a very complex one. It has not been demonstrated that the reported improvements are achievable when students are exposed to a completely student centred active curriculum. The