ecturing Is Ineffective And Senseless, Study Says

Hate lectures? There’s an absolute reason for that – they’re not just boring, they’re ineffective, too. According to a new study, undergraduate students in classes who are taught with traditional lecture-style are 1.5 times more likely to fail than students who are taught with active learning methods.

Based on the analysis of 225 studies of undergraduate STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics ) teaching methods, Scott Freeman, who is the lead author of the research and biologist at the University of Washington, concluded that the technique of teaching that turned students into active participants reduced failure rates and improved exam performance enough to change grades by half a letter or more. Also, 55 percent more students fail lecture-based courses than classes with at least some active leaning.

The meta-analysis is being published at Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“If you have a course with 100 students signed up, about 34 fail if they get lectured to but only 22 fail if they do active learning, according to our analysis,” Freeman said. “We’ve got to stop killing student performance and interest in science by lecturing and instead help them think like scientists.”

You don’t spend 100 grand a year in college to get lectured at, if they are going to do so, then you should opt for distant learning program or online course, which is way economical and affordable.

So what do you think about Freeman’s statement? We know active learning is effective and advantageous, do you think it’s likely to completely kill the lecture (Yes! We know lecturing is ineffective)?

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