Why Not Lecture?

American Library Association Positions on Information Literacy and University Learning, Presidential Committee on Information Literacy. Report released January 10, 1989, Washington, D.C.
  • Education needs a new model of learning-learning that is based on the information resources of the real world and learning that is active and integrated, not passive and fragmented. On an intellectual level, many teachers and school administrators recognize that lectures, textbooks, materials put on reserve, and tests that ask students to regurgitate data from these sources do not create an active, much less a quality, learning experience. Moreover, studies at the higher education level have proven that students fail to retain most information they are "given."
  • The curve for forgetting course content is fairly steep: a generous estimate is that students forget 50% of the content within a few months.... A more devastating finding comes from a study that concluded that even under the most favorable conditions, "students carry away in their heads and in their notebooks not more than 42% of the lecture content." Those were the results when students were told that they would be tested immediately following the lecture; they were permitted to use their notes; and they were given a prepared summary of the lecture.
  • These results were bad enough, but when students were tested a week later, without the use of their notes, they could recall only 17%of the lecture material.( K. Patricia Cross, "A Proposal to Improve Teaching or What Taking Teaching Seriously Should Mean," AAHE Bulletin 39 (September 1986): 10-11)
  • Because of the rapidly shrinking half-life of information, even the value of that 17 percent that students do remember must be questioned. To any thoughtful person, it must be clear that teaching facts is a poor substitute for teaching people how to learn, i.e., giving them the skills to be able to locate, evaluate, and effectively use information for any given need. What is called for is not a new information studies curriculum but, rather, a restructuring of the learning process. Textbooks, workbooks, and lectures must yield to a learning process based on the information resources available for learning and problem solving throughout people's lifetimes--to learning experiences that build a lifelong habit of library use. Such a learning process would actively involve students in the process of:
    • knowing when they have a need for information
    • identifying information needed to address a given problem or issue
    • finding needed information and evaluating the information
    • organizing the information
    • using the information effectively to address the problem or issue at hand.
  • Such a restructuring of the learning process will not only enhance the critical thinking skills of students but will also empower them for lifelong learning and the effective performance of professional and civic responsibilities.