A teacher I know shared this article on the effectiveness of lecture in the classroom, commenting that this made him rethink his teaching technique. The articles states that lecture quality does little to aid learning. Students who master the objectives of a given class do so with or without the professor. The problem is that this number is minority of students. Test results suggest that peer learning in an experimental environment scaffold learning much better than lectures do. Why is this? It seems that the fundamental concepts are understood at a deeper level when students experience them together instead of than hearing them through the words of the lecturer.

A second article  explores another aspect of learning: making mistakes. According to this article, mastery of a subject requires learning how not to do things at least as learning how. In other words, experiencing both the how and the how not go hand in hand when it comes to building effective learning environments. Consider the possibility of failure while listening to a lecture. It doesn’t even make sense, unless you count falling asleep. From this perspective, the lecture model really fails students.

Lesson for learning: build options for both success and failure into interactive learning environments.