“On the one hand, research on the matter is quite convincing: A 2014 meta-analysis of 228 studies of lectures and active-learning strategies showed that the results were decidedly one-sided in favor of active learning. So much so that the authors found it questionable ethically to make students attend lecture-based courses, given all that we know about how ineffective they are. As they wrote: If the studies had been medical experiments, they probably would have been "stopped for benefit — meaning that enrolling patients in the control condition might be discontinued because the treatment being tested was clearly more beneficial."Â
On the other hand, the vague way in which active-learning strategies are discussed means — as Josh Eyler, director of Rice University’s teaching center, wrote last year — that "it can create the illusion that the answers to teaching challenges are both monolithic and easily developed." Active learning, he noted, has become "an easy thing to prescribe as a cure but difficult to put into practice because it covers such a vast array of possibilities." Vague terminology does a poor job of communicating to instructors what, exactly, is wrong with lecturing. After all, just telling your students information seems to have worked pretty well for a very long time.”
