Sometimes, people come into my office area and in an effort to strike up conversation or something they say, “lectures are so old school don’t you think..?”.

I don’t know what to say to a statement like that. I don’t want to discourage their attempt to show how progressive a thinker they are… but I also don’t want people thinking that Educational Development equates to anti lecture!

For the record, I think lectures are great, and I like the readings/lecture/tutorial model for teaching and learning.. when done well. But I do agree that there could be more to a lecture than the usual 1 hour in a theatre, blink and you miss it type affair..

Apart from those flippent and strangely self concious remarks we get from the occasional visitor, the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of teachers I have ever worked with prodominantly use some variation of the lecture tutorial model. So while we do challenge people to reconsider their lectures a bit (ideas such as breaking the usual 1 hour lecture into a series of 6 x 10 minute lectures, webcast lectures, audio/video recorded lectures, well produced movies that say the same things, guest lectures and student lectures, and just simply improving the use of slide presentations… in all these instances we are sticking with simple variations lecture format.

Below are some links to concepts for new ways of presenting the lecture, some are good, some are terrible, some are a good idea with room for improvement:

  1. Ted Talks
  2. 10 minute lectures/webcast/recorded
  3. Berkeley on Youtube
  4. Presentations in Second Life
  5. Using Sketchup instead of Powerpoint
  6. Instant Message backchannel with a movie
  7. Wiki lecture notes
  8. Podcasting lectures
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