This is certainly a true statement. Prof. Warren Binford in her famous article, How to be the World’s Best Law Professor, Journal of Legal Education, Volume 64, Number 4 (May 2015), said very nicely:

“Of Course Limit Lecturing, but What about the Socratic Method?
Not by lecture. Over 700 studies have confirmed what many of us know based on our own experience as students: Lectures are among the least effective methods for achieving almost every educational goal ever identified. In fact, for some education goals, lectures have been identified as the least effective learning method. Others suggest that they may be worse than no teaching at all since attending a lecture leads to less studying afterward.”

The truth of this came home to me today. Yesterday I was sitting in the pool listening to some tv documentary on my phone (connected to a speaker). The program was on the remarkable career of one of my favorite musicians, Paul Simon. It was about an hour and I listened intently. It was very moving, walking through his struggles to get started, and his major albums, my favorite song Graceland. On my phone was the actual tv program but I didn’t watch that, only listened (didn’t check my emails even once!). This morning, during our daily walk, I was telling my wife about it. She loves Paul Simon as well. She listened intently (I think). I was surprised at how few of the details I remembered. I certainly remembered some of it and a few of the major stories but I’m sure that was about 20% of the whole thing.

So what does Prof. Binford suggest? You have to read the article. But I love her following comment:

“Let Your Students Teach
On second thought, there is at least one person in the lecture hall who benefits greatly from lecturing: the lecturer. So if you want to be ‘The World’s Best Law Professor,’ the first thing you should do is sit down and let your students go to the lectern. After all, we know that teaching generally produces the highest rate of long-term retention. Unfortunately, if one utilizes the lecture method to teach, it also yields the lowest level of long-term retention for those in the classroom—as low as five percent—so better than sending that student to the lectern, provide them with peer tutoring and other more interactive opportunities to teach and to learn from one another by participating in both roles. After all, there is considerable support for the effectiveness of collaborative learning.”

Two thoughts on this.

First, it reminds me that because I said something in class is not a reason to be annoyed when no one remembers what I said later, more than generally at best, even if I said it several times. I must be better at calling on students in class and trying to get a discussion going about the topic. I must be better at creating collaborative learning.

I have gotten better at power point but I’m trying to improve that so that students are seeing something at the same time they are hearing about it. I offer tutoring in my Business Assns class in the form of a Zoom meeting every Wednesday afternoon for 75-80 minutes. I discuss only what the students ask me to discuss so it’s a little more one-on-one but it’s still basically me talking. That helps the few students who attend. My best idea is giving a short take-home essay question after every class which must be answered and uploaded to D2L before the next class. It gives the student a chance to talk, to go to the podium, explain the couple issues in the essay, a great way to learn. And it usually leads to good discussion at the beginning of the next class.

Second, this is a long way of me telling you that you must read the cases assigned for each class. Reading by the way is almost as bad as listening as far as retaining what you read. Reading is really similar to listening to someone talk. Read the cases, then speak up in class. Question why the judge reached the conclusion she reached. Question why the ruling seems to contradict the last case we discussed. Question that the ruling makes no sense. For one thing, it makes it much more fun for me and I believe for the other students in class.