Lectures have had a bad press. They are regarded as a ‘traditional’
form of teaching and are often viewed as being out of step with the
newer enquiry-based learning approaches. Where lectures used to
be the cornerstone of a curriculum, they are increasingly regarded as
pedagogical anachronisms from another age. Lectures were thought
to be efficient; they made it possible for relatively few staff to ‘teach’
large groups of students and to ‘cover’ large blocks of curriculum.
Theywere thought to be effective based on an assumption that attendance
at lectures guaranteed learning. However, traditional lectures
encourage learner passivity and there is good evidence to show that
learners retain very little (5∼10%) of what they hear in lectures