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It is hard to give a good lecture, and most professors don't bother

Written December 18, 2021. Contact me@spxtr.net with any questions or comments.

There is a movement in college physics education to stop giving traditional lectures and instead make classes interactive. They now have group worksheets, live multiple-choice "clicker" questions, and other strategies to involve the students in the learning. There is a significant body of research demonstrating the effectiveness of these new teaching styles, and I do not doubt the results. Pretty much anything would be a better use of student's time than most traditional lectures. This is at least in part because giving a good lecture is difficult work, and physics teachers generally do not have time to do it.

Most professors are selected for their research skills, not their lecturing skills. There is some overlap, but not much. In addition, professors' primary concerns are publishing papers, writing grants, doing science, etc. The vast majority do not care about delivering an engaging lecture. Or, they would say they care, but they acknowledge that they simply don't have time to do so.

Some problems with lectures:

Many professors try to teach the course to more closely align with their research. This pulls the material away from the standard textbook, so the students do not have a secondary resource to fall back on if they don't follow the lecture.
Many professors are just plain bad at speaking coherently to an audience. This isn't all that big of a deal if the audience is already an expert and can fill in the blanks using material from the slides, but it's fatal for students.
Many courses rotate through different professors every year, so that each professor has to prepare new material each time they teach, rather than building on previous iterations.
Many professors have been leading experts in their field for decades and have completely forgotten what it was like to not intimately understand the material.
Many professors assume that their students understand the material after seeing it just once. They do not repeat it or attempt to cover the same ideas from different angles.
Many universities do not record their lectures, so if a student misses one or doesn't understand part of one they cannot go back and watch it again.

I don't see lecturers improving anytime soon, because the incentives just aren't there. Professors are paid to teach, not to teach well. As such, the recent move toward interactive learning must be a net good, even though it ostracizes students like me who do not wish to participate in the interactive sessions.

It's a little sad that the ancient art of the lecture is on its way out, but I suppose it's for the best.