Lecture was once a default mode of education delivery worldwide, and some might say that it remains so today. As more teachers at all levels adopt alternative teaching methods, we’re left to ask if lectures are ever appropriate. Here, Robert Talbert gives some good advice about when and why they still  work.

by Robert Talbert / The Chronicle of Higher Education Casting Out Nines blog / 13 February 2012

A lot of my posts here are about alternatives to the traditional lecture-oriented classroom. Based on that, and on somewhat testy comments like thesethat I leave lying around the internet, you might get the idea that I am firmly anti-lecture. But that’s not entirely true. There are times and places where lecture works quite well, even better than the alternatives. Here are a few purposes for which I think lecture is well-suited:

• Modeling thought processes. The benefit of hearing an expert learner lecture on a subject is that, if the lecture is clearly given, the audience can gain some insights into what makes the expert an expert. A good lecture does more than convey facts or put problems on the board — it lays bare the cognitive processes that an expert uses to assimilate those facts or think his or her way through those problems.

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