ABSTRACT
The academic classroom is undergoing a major revolution. More and more college and university courses are being offered online, including science classes. Even within online education, the nature of what constitutes content delivery, who provides it, and how is changing. In the book Teaching Naked (2012), Jose Bowen argues eloquently that the nature of traditional face-to-face higher education must change in light of competition from cheaper online sources. If students are going to pay a premium for the physical campus experience, then we need to rethink the traditional large lecture-hall encounter for content delivery. The 2013–2014 Higher Education Research Institute report from a faculty survey of undergraduate teaching, however, found that half of all faculty still rely extensively on lecture as their pedagogical format (https://heri.ucla.edu/briefs/HERI-FAC2014-brief.pdf" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">heri.ucla.edu/briefs/HERI-FAC2014-brief.pdf). Why? Possible reasons include the following: It’s how we were taught, and we learned that way; it’s an efficient way to deliver a lot of content; it gives us the feeling that we are in control of the learning environment; and doing anything else seems to require a substantial investment of time and effort with too little payoff.
