Why lectures are dead (or soon will be)

By Tony Bates. Lectures go back as far as ancient Greece and Roman times, and certainly from at least the start of the European university, in the 13th century. The term ‘lecture’ comes from the Latin to read. This was because in the 13th century, most books were extremely rare. They were painstakingly handcrafted and illustrated by monks, often from fragments or collections of earlier and exceedingly rare and valuable scrolls remaining from more than 1,000 years earlier from ancient Greek or Roman times, or were translated from Arabic sources, as much documentation was destroyed in Europe during the Dark Ages following the fall of the Roman empire. As a result, a university would often have only one copy of a book, and it may have been the only copy available in the world. The library and its collection therefore became critical to the reputation of a university, and professors had to borrow the only text from the library and literally read from it to the students, who dutifully wrote down their own version of the lecture. Read more...