Revamping education: why we dont learn from lectures

In a recent poll of 1,000 students, the self-reported average amount of concentration during lectures was a mere ten minutes
Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep. Albert Camus The lecture a one-two-hour-long, one-size fits all, largely passive, transfer of information remains the most widely used method of education at schools and colleges worldwide. It is a ritual that has been repeated for hundreds (if not thousands of years. !tudents, parents, and educators assume the lectures have been very helpful (especially if the lecturer is famous or a great orator . "owever, beginning in the #$%&s, research in cognitive neuroscience and psychology turned these assumptions upside down. Thirty five years ago 'ohnstone and (ercival observed students in over $& lectures, given by #) different lecturers. They noted the longest attention span in a lecture was about #* minutes and that during a lecture there were many periods of inattention such that by the end of the lecture, attention had dropped to + minutes. "artley and ,avies, in a #$*% paper, noted that after a lecture, student-s recall of facts from the first #& minutes of the lecture was more than three-fold higher than from the last #& minutes. These studies suggest that how good or bad a given lecturer is has only a small bearing on how much information students retained after a %& minute lecture much of it is determined by how our brains are wired to process information. .nother insight from neuroscience research is the surprising finding that learning is a highly individualised process after hearing the same set of facts, every student creates his /her own meaning and a uni0ue set of memories, based on his/her own beliefs and e1periences. In other words, information cannot simply be transmitted passively from one mind to another, li2e say we can with a music file. 3esearch also shows that passive teacher centric instruction does little to develop problem solving s2ills a reason why companies increasingly find that today-s graduates are not prepared for the wor2 force and end up having to retrain them. 4learly there are many factors that affect learning, and as with any field there are disagreements about some of the research findings. 5ut in today-s hyperconnected environment with an abundance of distractions, the attention span of a student is li2ely to be compromised even further than it was several decades ago. In a recent poll of #,&&& students, the self-reported average amount of concentration during lectures was a mere ten minutes6 If students zone out for significant portions of most lectures and if what was learned in the first part is erased during the second half of the lecture, then clearly long lectures are not the most effective tool. 7hy then is the %& minute lecture so prevalent8 5efore printed boo2s were widely available, note ta2ing during lectures, with or without understanding the material, was a means of gathering information. 9ectures became widespread in the #:&&s when the ;ingdom of (russia launched an *-year basic primary education programme to prepare the masses for a growing industrial wor2force. !ubse0uently this model of education spread throughout the world for both school and college education, and remains largely intact today due to

habit, resistance to change, and ignorance of the alternatives. 7hat-s the alternative8 .ctive or e1periential learning a form of learning that re0uires students to reflect and apply ideas in solving problems. It is more student centric and often involves collaborative (peer learning. "ow good is the evidence that active learning is better8 <ne of the most impressive demonstrations is from a #$$* study that compared )&*+ students ta2ing #+ traditional science courses versus ++=* students ta2ing +* interactive> active learning courses. The study found that measures of conceptual understanding were vastly superior in the active learning group by a margin of ) standard deviations6 ?any other studies, across multiple fields, show that active learning outperforms passive teaching. 4hange is coming and many leading institutions are beginning to de-emphasise passive learning. @or e1ample, at ,u2e-AB! medical school in !ingapore, unli2e traditional medical schools, students learn before coming to class (through online materials and lectures , ta2e a test when they come into class to ensure they do the pre-reading, sit through a short #= minute lecture and then reta2e a test. They then apply the 2nowledge to solve case problems in small teams. .n active peer learning model is also now being adopted by high schools at the !pectra !econdary !chool in !ingapore, several wee2s of class lectures are made available online so students can progress at their own pace and even ahead of the class. Cuic2 learners of mathematics can help their fellow student slower learners individually. 5y reducing time spent in passive lectures, colleges can free up time with more active problem solving and team based learning strategies. The return on investment from tuition and education would then be greater to both the student and society. To empower the ne1t generation of students, we would do well to heed theobservation by !ophocles that, one must learn by doing the thing, for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try. ,3. (. ?B3.9I ,<3.I!7.?D, ,3. ?<".A 4"I9B;B3I, ,3. ;. 3.AE. ;3I!"A.A ( urali !oraiswamy is a "rofessor at !uke #niversity$ ohan Chilukuri is a physician and educator with the #niversity of %orth Carolina$ &anga 'rishnan is the !ean of the !uke(%#S )raduate edical School, Singapore* ;eywordsF lecturers, passive lectures, peer learning model, education, passive learning, .ctive learning, e1periential learning