The lecture hall is under attack, the Washington Post reports. Science, math and engineering departments at many universities are abandoning or retooling the lecture as a style of teaching, worried that it’s driving students away. The faculty at Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore has dedicated this academic year to finding alternatives to the lecture [1] in those subjects. Johns Hopkins, Harvard University [2] and even the White House [3] have hosted events in which scholars have assailed the lecture. Lecture classrooms are the big-box retailers of academia, paragons of efficiency. One professor can teach hundreds of students in a single room, trailed by a retinue of teaching assistants. But higher-education leaders increasingly blame the format for high attrition in science and math classes. They say the lecture is a turn-off, higher education at its most passive, leading to frustration and bad grades in highly challenging disciplines…