Lectures are hopelessly outdated

Relax in a chair and listen to a professor’s speech. This form of education should be in a past, argue two American scholars. The lecture rooms are seriously outdated.

In an article in The New England Journal of Medicine the doctors Charles Prober and Chip Heath argue for new teaching methods in universities. The science has developed enormously over the past century, they write, but students are still taught in the same way as when the Wright brothers were working on their first airplane .

Better education, according to the doctors, does not require extra time. What matters is that information should “stick” to the students better.  Also, teachers should not be afraid if their audience is emotionally involved in the offered material. This also ensures that information sticks better.

The lectures themselves may stay, but as video lectures. The student learns the basics at home, so that during lectures at the university they can devote their time for exciting practical education. According to the scholars, in this way students get considerably higher grades.