So what's a lecture anyhow?

Interested by this article at the New York Times - 'At M.I.T., Large Lectures Are Going the Way of the Blackboard'. Which means, I guess, the bin.
The negative attitude - of both experts and learners - to 'lectures' (or indeed anything that looks and feels like formal learning) is one of the parameters we have to deal with at CoJo. It's true, that even the most formal looking sessions (which, though formal, stop a long way short of what I recognise by the word 'lecture') tend win learners over in the end ... all the same, the idea of something 'formal' is an initial barrier. And while a college with full-time students might just about get away with it (but shouldn't), the last thing we can afford to offer time-poor, stressed, in-career potential learners is something that they think will mean a lot of listening.
MIT's change to "smaller classes that emphasize hands-on, interactive, collaborative learning" for its introduction isn't exactly an educational revolution nor is the insight that "most students learn fundamental concepts more successfully, and are better able to apply them, through interactive, collaborative, student-centered learning." But it's interesting that even within a context where you might expect a formal approach ... it's now judged less effective than the alternative.