Lecturing in the digital age has a time and a place; today, that place isn’t in front of classrooms. If our goals as educators are to mentor students through gaining meaningful knowledge and skills that they will build upon and continue to grow then we have to allow our students the opportunities to immerse themselves in learning.
A few years back when the “flipped classroom” first came into the educational scene I remember not being very impressed with the pedagogical strategies a few of my colleagues were using. Some of them had the same slides and lecture that they would have given in class and students were watching the video of it at home the night before. Well, some of them anyway. While it’s true that this switch freed up more time in the classroom for hands on activities or discussions, there were huge issues with students not coming in prepared and being penalized. A lecture is a lecture and I think it’s even worse when you have to watch it at home with no interaction, discussion, or engagement.
I got a good laugh from the illustration in the textbook from the thirteenth-century; it definitely illustrated to me what happens when lecturers pontificate and don’t consider the audience. It looks like what we see today when someone lectures except we have more people not paying attention because we realize today that there are so many better ways to learn than to sit and listen. As the textbook points out though, lectures aren’t all bad. There are places for them in learning if they are accompanied with multi-media and serve as a summary of sorts that suits the audiences’ interests and needs, too.
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