Lecture-based classes have been a staple of higher education for centuries, and the University of Northern Iowa is not an exception. Although the university boasts smaller class sizes, which incites us to infer that more individualized learning occurs, many classes involve a professor standing in front of a group of students and speaking for fifty or ninety minutes. Since this is the case, does it really matter if there are twenty or a hundred students in the classroom? A study conducted by professors Joan Middendorf and Alan Kalish from Indiana University, which can be found at http://ideas.time.com, found that students have a 10-18 minute window of optimal focus, and after that, students experience a lapse in focus. Now, many people might scoff at this and blame texting and Twitter for this small window, but the study performed by Middendorf and Kalish was conducted in 1996, before such distractions existed.

Another interesting find was that students were able to recall information from the beginning of a 20 minute presentation better than information from the end of it. This suggests, once again, that after the 10-18 minute window, students just cannot concentrate on a lecture anymore, no matter how interesting and eloquent of a speaker their professor might be.

Despite this evidence that lectures are ineffective, most universities across the country stick with the traditional form of teaching. David Daniels argues, in his essay “College Lectures: Is Anybody Listening?” that when people get together to learn, passivity should be replaced with interactivity. Only then will students learn to think critically and creatively. Daniels has a sad but true theory as to why lectures are still alive and well in universities across the country.

“Lectures are easier on everyone than debates. Professors can pretend to teach by lecturing just as students can pretend to learn by attending lectures, with no one the wiser, including the participants,” Daniels said. “In a classroom where everyone contributes, students are less able to hide and professors less tempted to engage in intellectual exhibitionism.”

While I believe the University of Northern Iowa and many of its professors are headed in the right direction, I have still taken plenty of classes during my career at this university that fit with Daniels’s above scenario. Just because lectures are a centuries-old tradition does not mean that it is the optimal form of teaching. It is time for us to stop ignoring the facts that researchers like Middendorf and Kalish are giving us and leave lectures in the past.