an article by Professor Alejandro Armellini for Jisc
The University of Northampton is putting active blended learning at the heart of its teaching – to the extent that its purpose-built Waterside campus will have no large lecture theatres at all when it opens next year. In this Q&A, its dean of learning and teaching, Professor Alejandro Armellini, explains the thinking behind this radical move and the benefits of taking an active blended learning approach.
What’s wrong with the lecture?
We may need to qualify the term lecture. What’s wrong with the broadcast lecture? Probably what’s wrong is the understanding that “same place same time” seems to be equated with quality.
That clearly is not the case with lectures, particularly with broadcast lectures, when one single person is delivering information to a large group of people with hardly any interaction. If we look at National Union of Students (NUS) reports over the years, the students’ criticism of lectures is consistent: should a broadcast lecture count as contact time?
My argument is that it shouldn’t, and it should not count towards “teaching intensity” either. In other words, “same place, same time” is not enough to guarantee quality when the so-called teaching method is actually “information delivery”: the notes of one person copied into the notes of 200 people without going through the brains of anyone. That is highly problematic.
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