Lecture Mode

Lecture Mode

       The lecture mode stands for the manner of teaching or giving instruction to a group of students or an audience through a lecture during the whole class period. In this mode, the teacher or instructor covers the topic or lesson concerned in a lecture, and the audience receives exposure through the lecture. This mode has both advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages

       The lecture mode has several advantages mainly related to administrative aspects. Firstly, it is cheap in terms of human resources. Secondly, it is simple to arrange if the accommodation is available. Thirdly, this mode can be exploited to teach a large audience. Fourthly, the mode does not demand much technological and infrastructural support. Finally, the lecture mode is flexible since most of the teaching purposes such as acquisition, reflection, application and evaluation can be achieved by a well-presented  lecture.

Disadvantages

       The lecture mode also has a number of disadvantages. Firstly, the most serious, even for a good lecture, is probably that of sustaining the listener’s attention for a class period of fifty to sixty minutes. Secondly, this mode hardly allows feedback. Thirdly, being mechanical, the mode reduces the learner’s motivation, and hence hinders learning. Fourthly, it demands high professional skills on the part of the instructor. Finally, the lecture mode appears to avoid modern technological supports that can make teaching as well as learning much easy, attractive, systematic and thus effective.

Conclusion

       Though the lecture mode has a large number of disadvantages, we can maximize the advantages and minimize the disadvantages so as to use it successfully. Firstly, the lecture should maximize the human contact, especially through eye contact, gestures, a certain amount of personal anecdote, humours and so on. Secondly, the problem of attention span may be overcome in various ways such as by the liveliness of presentation, the use of audio-visual aids, etc. Thirdly, to reduce the problem of lack of feedback, some interactive activities, for example, the ‘buzz group’ may be introduced. Finally, whenever the lecturer thinks that the audience’s attention may be beginning to flag, he/she can set them some easily explained and specific task. Or, the lecture can be stopped for a while with a view to checking the understanding of the audience through placing a few short questions and/or quizzes before them.