WORLD OF LEARNING: LEARNING DOES NOT EQUAL LISTENING TO A (BAD) LECTURE PART 3

WORLD OF LEARNING: LEARNING DOES NOT EQUAL LISTENING TO A LECTURE PART 1
WORLD OF LEARNING: LEARNING DOES NOT EQUAL LISTENING TO A LECTURE PART 2

Further thoughts after some interaction with a good lecturer:

I think Mazur made his disparaging comments about lecturing to get teachers to think about opening up from a top-down model, and also to get them thinking about better ways to assess whether students are understanding concepts rather than regurgitating "facts." Since he was saying that "the lecture notes of the instructor get transferred to the notebooks of the students without passing through the brains of either," while he was giving a (good) lecture during which I'm sure many listeners (like me) were taking notes, I believe he appreciated a certain irony in his stance, and that his tongue was lodged firmly in cheek.

There are so many situations where we happily take in ideas in a receptive mode--movies or the theater come to mind, not to mention "lectures" that we go to for fun--that demonstrate the viability of the medium.

On the other hand, I see too many kids who never really engage with school material because their teachers give (bad) lectures and assess understanding on fill-in-the blank handouts and tests where there are only correct and incorrect answers. I always refer back in my own mind to Miss Dempsey, my eighth grade teacher, who would open the social studies book and read it to us verbatim for that class, with the windows closed and the radiators clanking in a stuffy, smelly room.

That kind of person is still around, although not many could reach the standards for boredom that she set.

Isn't the key to a good lecturer her enthusiasm for the subject matter, ability to tell a story, and awareness of her audience? That translates to audience engagement, rather than mandatory auditing.