The essays in this forum demonstrate how the shift from an instructional to a learning paradigm is in full motion and is happening in scholarly conversations about communication and instruction. When asked about the role of the lecture in today's educational context, responses varied from some form of "none at all" to "the lecture…

The author of this brief forum article argues that it is time to encourage faculty members to rethink student learning: encourage the scholarship of teaching and expose faculty to key research articles about student learning. Then, building on this knowledge, the academy needs to offer assistance to faculty in designing student-centered…

In this article I examine the role of the contemporary university in light of the mass increase in class sizes that has occurred on an international scale. While we may look nostalgically back to a time when lectures numbered a few hundred students and tutorials had as few as ten, massification at undergraduate level is an inescapable fact of…

Beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s, higher education was swept up in the theoretical phenomena of mastery learning, cooperative learning, and small-group learning. Professors, instructors, and teachers at the K-12 level became facilitators, guides, supervisors, counselors, and advocates for all things team and group. The thought of a…

Lectures have been widely criticized as a method of teaching, but remain a standard component of most university mathematics courses. Does this necessarily harm students' education? This critical review contends that many arguments against lecturing are misconceived, at least when applied to mathematics. The effectiveness of lectures in carrying…

This study compared the final grades of courses taught both through distance learning (online) and the traditional classroom (lecture) delivery mode. This research sought to determine if a significant difference existed between the grades of the two identified delivery modes. Four courses taught by Embry Riddle Aeronautical University were…

Web-enhanced educational programs such as Blackboard (2003; http://www.blackboard.com/) provide opportunities for instructors to make supplemental course materials available to students. However, little research has investigated the effects of unlimited access to course lectures on achievement and attendance in traditional postsecondary classroom…

Research indicates that student achievement improves when teachers provide opportunities for active engagement. Guided notes have been suggested as a way to increase active student responding during teacher-directed lectures. The purpose of this review was to summarize research on the effectiveness of guided notes. Specifically, we sought to…

Many authors claim that students' attention declines approximately 10 to 15 min into lectures. To evaluate this claim, we reviewed several types of studies including studies of student note taking, observations of students during lectures, and self-reports of student attention, as well as studies using physiological measures of attention. We found…

This paper argues that if new communications technologies and online spaces are to yield "new relationship[s] with learners" then research that is tuned to recognize, capture and explain the pedagogical processes at the center of such interactions is vital. This has implications for the design of pedagogical activities within Initial…

Literature on the efficiency of student note taking from lectures and the extent to which students learn as a direct or indirect result of taking notes is reviewed. Attention is also given to the relevance of research in this area to modern lecturing practice and to the problems of such research. (Author/MSE)

Current practice in universities foregrounds the traditional lecture, tutorial, examination approach to teaching. The nature of currently-accepted practice in course design and administration is considered through an examination of the influence on universities of historical views about knowledge. These findings are contrasted with current…

An evaluation of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) in economics showed that CAI does improve student scores but not significantly more than traditional assignments. Results indicated that CAI is better than just using lectures to teach economics, and that, while, CAI is not better than traditional assignments, it is not any worse. (RM)

A study investigated to what extent, if any, the modularization and individualization of composition instruction benefited students with severe skill deficiencies. Gain in writing skills--as measured by pretest/posttest differences--was compared with regard to two groups of students: those taught by a traditional lecture-discussion method of…

Three assessments of the status of school science discovered that textbooks frequently determine course content, the preparation science provides for next academic level is its justification, lecture method is widely used, science is a low educational priority, and students feel it is irrelevant to later life experiences. (MBR)