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Students today can learn so much without ever leaving their dorm rooms. They can watch lectures online from so many sources. In fact, when I am preparing to give a lecture, I often go to exactly these types of sources to refresh my memory and hopefully learn something new or get ideas about what works in a lecture.
But the fact that my students can learn the same material in the same way without coming to class means that something else should be in the classroom that they can't access themselves with an internet connection. Asking students to sit and listen to information they can access themselves online is a waste of their time.
What the lecture offers that these wonderful online resources cannot is Face-time. It's the ability to engage, to discuss and exchange ideas. It's a chance to search out connections between the course material and its relevance to the lives of the students.
I once took an Ecology course, and the professor had us get up and physically move and represent Hadley Cells. To this day, I remember what they are and how they move because of this lecture, and in a way that I wouldn't had I not experienced that interactive lecture.
Even though my course is a large enrollment course of 60 students, I am still going to try and bring an interactive element into our classroom next Friday. We are covering two composers, and two operas, one a French Grand Opera and the other a German Romantic one. I divided the class into 6 groups of 10, and each is responsible for enacting or presenting either the Composer, the Opera, or the Genre in a creative way next Friday. The groups are already working on their assignments and seemed enthusiastic about the idea. Because they are performing, I am quite sure that they will more closely read their text regarding these subjects. I think this probably just as good of a way of holding students accountable for the material as a quiz.
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