Lectures are such an effective teaching method because they exploit evolved human psychology to improve learning.

Full Abstract

Lectures are probably the best teaching method for many students in many circumstances; especially for communicating conceptual knowledge, and where there is a significant knowledge gap between lecturer and audience. However, the lack of a convincing rationale has been a factor in under-estimating the importance of lectures, and there are many who advocate their replacement with written communications or electronic media. I suggest that lectures are so effective because they exploit the spontaneous human aptitude for learning from spoken (rather than written) information. Literacy is a recent cultural artefact, and for most of their evolutionary history humans communicated by direct speech. By contrast with speech, all communication technologies--whether reading a book or a computer monitor--are artificial and unnatural. Furthermore, learning is easier during formal, quiet, real-time social events. The structure of a lecture artificially manipulates human psychology to increase vigilance, focus attention, and generate authority for the lecturer--all of which make communications more memorable for the student. Instead of trying to phase-out lectures, we should strive to make them better by understanding that lectures are essentially formal, spoken, social events.

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Author information

Author/s: Charlton, Bruce G (BG);

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Editorial

Journal: Medical hypotheses (Med Hypotheses), published in Scotland. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2006-; vol 67 (issue 6) : pp 1261-5

Dates: Created 2006/10/02; Completed 2007/01/04;

PMID: 16949216, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Humans
Learning

Psychology
Teaching

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