Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, Volume 23, Number 2

While we doubt that any of the Journal's readers would align themselves with the caricature of the teacher-centered instructor above, it is possible that they have a colleague who does. The reality is that some 17 years after Barr and Tagg's landmark article, "From Teaching to Learning-A New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education" (1995), lecture still reigns as the dominant mode of instruction in many college classrooms. While research supports lecture as an effective method for delivering certain types of content (in conjunction with other methods), there is overwhelming evidence that a steady or sole diet of this instructional mode leads to unengaged students whose abilities to think critically, solve complex problems, and work together with peers-among other skills-are not being addressed.