The Lecture in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction 2.0
A second look at the persistence of the lecture as an instructional format in higher education.
In a world where more and more of the information we consume is disconnected from location and time, the idea that we would find it logical to have students meet in a single location at a specific time to hear a presentation seems increasingly odd.
Donald Clark focuses on the one-off nature of the lecture:
“Imagine”, Clark writes, “if a movie were shown only once. Or your local newspaper was read out just once a day in the local square. Or novelists read their books out once to an invited audience. That’s face-to-face lectures for you: it’s that stupid.”
Others focus more on the instructional value of the lectures. Graham Gibbs:
“More than 700 studies have confirmed that lectures are less effective than a wide range of methods for achieving almost every educational goal you can think of. Even for the straightforward objective of transmitting factual information, they are no better than a host of alternatives, including private reading. Moreover, lectures inspire students less than other methods, and lead to less study afterwards.”
So why do we hang on to lectures?
Explanations for the persistence of lectures are predictable:
the difficulty of introducing new instructional strategies;
the constraints imposed by the architectural design of universities;
classes sizes are often too great to allow for more interactive, activity-based instruction;
the difficulty for faculty (and possibly anxiety) of using more interactive instructional techniques.
Privileging the Original, One-of-a-Kind
One factor we may not have considered is how lectures fit into broader cultural sensibilities that privilege original and live events (or one-of-a-kind objects) over reproductions and technologically-mediated experiences.
A line was drawn with the advent of Modernity between
cultural practices and artefacts — such as paintings — that is original and one-of-a-kind;
reproductions of the original, made possible by technology. The original is highly valued; the reproduction is far less so.
This core distinction takes several forms:
One-of-a-kind artisan crafts v mass manufactured “crafts.”
Live music performances v recordings.
Paintings v photographic reproductions.
Haute couture fashion v “Pret a porter” (or ready-to-wear).
According to Walter Benjamin, the increased place during Modernity of reproductions reconfigured the meaning and value of both the original and the copy. The presence of ubiquitous copies can weaken the value of the original, but it still maintains a privileged status. The original maintains an “aura”. (See “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction“, 1936.)
In this context, the shift from lectures to digital higher education can be understood as not merely a migration from one instructional model to another but a change from a one-time, “original” live event or object to a recorded and reproducible event or object. The original is privileged, as with art and other cultural artefacts and practices. It is the faculty, not the student, that has the most robust attachment to the lecture:
The logic that privileges lectures are often revealed through language, the choice of words and the metaphors we use. Defenders of the lecture, like Mark Edmundson, tell us that,
“Every memorable class is a bit like a jazz composition. There is the basic melody that you work with. It is defined by the syllabus. But there is also a considerable measure of improvisation against that disciplining background.”
Abigail Walthausen explains,
“The lecture is an art, and like other arts such as painting, musicianship and writing, it takes real dedication and many hours of practice to excel at.”
Clay Shirky rightly notes that defenders of lectures believe that face-to-face education is the only “real” education. Everything else is a facsimile, at best. (Shirky proposed The MOOC Criticism Drinking Game: take a swig whenever someone says “real”, “true”, or “genuine” when questioning the value of MOOCs.)
See Me, Feel Me
The appeal of the lecture among academics has a second, more earthly explanation, one less likely to evoke comparisons to jazz and other art forms.
Academic work is unique. Few occupations involve strapping on a microphone and speaking to large groups of people regularly. Fewer occupations, still, ask the speaker to rely on their unique perspective on the topic as the basis for these talks. Indeed, success as an academic requires establishing a unique position in their field of study. The audience for this work consists of people whose success in this context is measured by their ability to mimic the logic and facts you present.
The lecture, then, is not simply another instructional format. It’s a unique but central feature of the profession. It pulls from and feeds into the professional’s assessment of what makes them unique and valuable as an academic — and, inevitably, as an individual. It is a source and marker of personal and professional identity — whether the academic enjoys the process. Consequently, no analysis to understand the lecture format's persistence is legitimate without considering these social and professional dimensions.