Lectures fail to help students learn says Harvard professor
Tuesday 11 March 2008
‘Lectures are only successful at helping students pass exams, not to understand the subject’. This claim was made by Professor Eric Mazur, a leading physicist from Harvard University, in an address at the University of Surrey on Friday, 7 March. Citing wide-ranging research, he argued that while students successfully passed their exams, tests showed they made hardly any progress in understanding the key concepts which lectures were designed to teach. Lectures need to be completely redesigned if they are to achieve the goal of promoting genuine understanding.
Eric Mazur is Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard where he has been located since 1982. He is author or co-author of more than 200 scientific publications and 12 patents. He was keynote speaker at an event at Surrey entitled 'Enhancing Learning, Teaching and the Student Experience'. This was an event for university staff at which, apart from an external speaker, there were opportunities to show-case and share good practice and to take stock of current developments. In welcoming Professor Mazur to the event, Professor David Airey, Pro Vice-Chancellor, was keen to emphasise, not just his contributions to physics, but his contribution to the teaching of physics and to pedagogy more generally. Among his many publications he noted Classroom Demonstrations: Learning Tools or Entertainment?, Confessions of a converted lecturer and Science Lectures: A relic of the past?
Professor Mazur made two presentations at the event. His keynote address, attended by staff from across the university, was entitled ‘Memorisation or understanding: are we teaching the right thing?’ According to Professor Mazur, lectures can only succeed in promoting genuine learning if they contain questions which require students to apply their understanding. These questions promote useful learning when the lecturer steps out of the limelight and encourages peer discussion – a technique which can be used even in large lectures.
He later ran a workshop on Peer Instruction which drew upon his book Peer Instruction: A User's Manual and his award winning DVD Interactive Teaching. Both provided stimulating insights into approaches to learning and teaching by more fully engaging the students.
Also during the event participants had the opportunity to discuss current learning and teaching activities in the university at a poster session involving more than 50 posters and in a programme of workshops.
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