An Alternative to a Traditional Lecture Course

Abstract

tently better examination performance than in courses employing lectures and no daily quizzes. As shown in Lovell-Troy's (1989) recent review, more than 80 percent of introductory sociology courses use either lectures alone or discussions with lectures. In an early investigation of variables influencing attendance at lectures, Lloyd and his associates (1972) varied lectures in terms of their relevance to forthcoming examinations. Not surprisingly, attendance declined when content did not bear directly on the examinations. In another condition, when the right to attend lectures was made contingent on completing assignments, there was no increase in completion of assignments. More recently, Rysberg (1986) reports that students in a course involving unit testing to mastery not only performed significantly better than those in a lecture course, but also rated the course more positively. Similarly, Meredith (1985) reports that class members' perceptions of intimacy were related negatively to class size and positively to the use of discussion rather than lecture. The ratings of intimacy, in turn, were related positively to the students' evaluations of the course. Cohen (1983) reports similar results, in which class size, in a negative relationship, was the single most important predictor of evaluation of the lecturer's performance. In the typical lecture course, the instructor lectures for approximately an hour; assigns a textbook, which is recited to the students; and gives one or two examinations (which are returned to students only after a week or more) and a final (which is never returned). In the mass of material presented to students, what are they supposed to learn? How can they reasonably be expected to distinguish the important from the trivial? The need to help students master material is recognized increasingly in the literature, but the lecture method remains dominant (Mayer 1986; Saltman 1988).