Breathing Life Into the Lecture Hall

"If the old traditional lecture is dying, it is because we are relying so much on the template of technology to make up for the lack of content," said Michael Bugeja, director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University. "PowerPoint has done more to kill the lecture than people really are aware of."

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Other instructors have turned to the clicker, a device similar to a remote control, which students point at a receiver in the front of a classroom to answer questions. It also allows professors to determine almost instantly what percentage of students have the right answer.

Last week, Redish asked the students to use the clickers to state whether the acceleration in an experiment was positive, negative, zero or impossible to know. Within 10 seconds, he knew that most students had chosen incorrectly.

"Eighty-six percent got the wrong answer," he said. "Physics is about data. Our first intuition is not quite right. We have to modify our intuition."

Students say clickers keep them engaged, if not entertained.

"I feel like I'm in 'ask the audience' on 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire,' " said Landon Katz, 18, a freshman.

Of course, there are still some professors who can galvanize a class by using dramatic storytelling, internal structure, movement and a strong voice.

Seth Jacobs, a Boston College associate professor of history, said he uses skills he learned in his previous life as an actor, sometimes employing voices other than his own to bring historical figures to life. He has never used PowerPoint, but he has won teaching awards.

The problem, some educators say, is that few teachers can bring a lecture to life.

"Far too many lecturers tend to read aloud material students could readily read on their own," said Coleen Grisson, professor of English at Trinity University in San Antonio.

Harvard University education professor Julie Reuben said a poll of college courses would find that many professors still rely on traditional lecturing as a primary mode of instruction. It's what they had during their college years, said Daniel J. Klionsky, a biology professor at the University of Michigan who has written about the lecture as a teaching tool. And some say the vast class sizes necessitate the format.

However, another dynamic exists, Reuben said. Professors often spend their adult lives researching a particular topic and feel they have a unique synthesis and understanding of the research. They want to talk about their work.

And although the process of putting together the lectures is a creative, intense experience for professors, it doesn't always translate to students who have to sit and listen, Reuben said.

"This is one of the tensions," she said. "How do you have courses in which students have a similar kind of intensive learning?"