Lecturing practices and note-taking purposes

An equal probability sample of 100 academic staff was surveyed to investigate how and why they used lectures in their teaching. The respondents were very conservative in their use of media (blackboard and overhead projector dominating). While the goals they hope to achieve by lecturing are laudable, most of them, arguably, are better achieved by other teaching methods—those requiring more active involvement of the students. One activity that almost all respondents wanted students to undertake was the taking of lecture notes. For most a major purpose of these notes was to facilitate further study; for many a purpose was to allow students to see or to construct a structure for the subject. The proportion of respondents employing lecture hand-outs as part of their teaching strategy was high, supporting the contention that not all staff see lecturing as the straight transmission of information from the lecturer's to the students' notes.