Challenging The Primacy Of Lectures: The Dissonance Between Theory And Practice In University Teaching

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Challenging The Primacy Of Lectures: The Dissonance Between Theory And Practice In University Teaching
Almost nobody, it seems, believes in the instructivist model of learning - the presentation of material and the expectation (hope?) that it will be absorbed by osmosis. Most writers in the field support something like this: "learning environments should be student-centred, knowledge-centred, asessment-centred and community-centred." So why, asks the author, is the dominant mode of teaching at universities more like the instructionist and less like the constructivist? Too many factors inhibit change. More...