Lecturing: A lost art

Lecturing, for many years the typical mode of learning and teaching in university courses, has received much criticism in pedagogic circles in recent years. It has been suggested that lecturing promotes surface learning rather than deep learning, and that there is no real rationale for its use. This commentary intends to provide a rationale for lecturing in relation to professional courses, such as pharmacy, in which students are expected to assimilate learning from a wide range of sources, including clinical placements, laboratory classes, workshops, and their own reading. In this context, a series of lectures form the backbone of a course in which the lecturer brings together disparate elements of the curriculum and puts them into context. This enables learning in higher education to proceed in a constructivist manner in which students see their course as a whole, rather than an accumulation of unrelated activities and classes.