ABSTRACT
In recent years a great deal of discussion has focused on the development of ‘active learning’ in higher education (see series website guide, Brown 2004). Lecturing is often viewed as an example of ‘passive learning’ in which the only activities students engage in during a lecture are listening and note taking. Such lectures are often described as ‘didactic’ which means ‘intending to instruct’, from the Greek, didaskein, ‘to teach’. Active
learning on the other hand includes activities such as discussion, questioning, problem solving and other forms of interactivity, which are, traditionally, not carried out during a lecture. As active learning has been shown to encourage deeper learning there has been a move away from lecturing to more small group teaching, self-directed learning and problembased learning. However, as student numbers have increased in tertiary education and many universities have tried to resist the pressures of increasing staff/student contact hours in order to protect research productivity, there has been a recent increase in lecturing together with other forms of large group teaching. How can these two very different positions be justified? The view supported here is that lecturing need not be passive and that there are a variety of different learning activities that can be carried out by students during a lecture.
