The classroom lecture—it’s been criticized, despised, even lampooned. An entire generation of moviegoers can recite Ben Stein’s plea for students to wake up and respond to his dead-pan, droning lecture in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. (“Anyone? … Anyone?”)
Lectures aren’t necessarily bad—they can be an effective way to help students acquire new knowledge (Hattie, 2008; Schwerdt & Wupperman, 2010). The problem with lectures is often a matter of pacing. For some students, the information may come too slowly or cover what they already know; other students may have trouble taking in information so rapidly, or they may lack the prior knowledge they need to understand the concepts presented. After a hit-or-miss lecture, teachers often assign homework, which many students perform in a private hell of frustration and confusion. What did my teacher say about cross-multiplying? Comma use in compound sentences? The Laffer curve?
Some teachers are now turning this model on its head, creating flipped or inverted classrooms in which they record lectures and post them online. Students watch the lectures at home, where they can speed through content they already understand or stop and review content they missed the first time the teacher discussed it (and might have been too embarrassed to ask their teacher to repeat in class). Online lectures can also easily incorporate visual representations, such as interactive graphs, videos, or photos of important historical events.
