One of my lecturers was Prof John Brown, the Astronomer Royal for Scotland. In our honours course we would have weekly two-hour lectures from him. These typically broke down as follows:
30 mins: waiting for professor to turn up 60 mins: listening to professor bitch about university politics 10 mins: general banter 20 mins: actual lecture
And yet I wouldn't have missed those lectures for anything.
What lectures teach you that books and notes don't is culture and style. I'm sure the formal content of Prof Brown's lectures on Bremsstrahlung radiation or modelling SS433 could have been delivered on paper, but the style of approaching problems in a particular way, the scientific and intellectual culture that forms the foundation of a way of approaching hard problems - these things are learned much better in person. And learning the astrophysical problem-solving style of the Astronomer Royal is more than worth the investment of time.
I'm not particularly wedded to the lecture per se, but I think that learning is about much more than just the transmission of information, and that contact time between students and senior researchers is incredibly valuable even if it seems terribly inefficient.
no subject
30 mins: waiting for professor to turn up
60 mins: listening to professor bitch about university politics
10 mins: general banter
20 mins: actual lecture
And yet I wouldn't have missed those lectures for anything.
What lectures teach you that books and notes don't is culture and style. I'm sure the formal content of Prof Brown's lectures on Bremsstrahlung radiation or modelling SS433 could have been delivered on paper, but the style of approaching problems in a particular way, the scientific and intellectual culture that forms the foundation of a way of approaching hard problems - these things are learned much better in person. And learning the astrophysical problem-solving style of the Astronomer Royal is more than worth the investment of time.
I'm not particularly wedded to the lecture per se, but I think that learning is about much more than just the transmission of information, and that contact time between students and senior researchers is incredibly valuable even if it seems terribly inefficient.