What are Lectures For? The Institute of Education’s Jonathan Firth reflects on a major component of university teaching

Academic lectures have existed for hundreds of years in something close to their present form, and further back still, they trace their roots to prehistoric community storytelling (Jones, 2007). By the time of the Ancient Greeks, oral readings for both information and entertainment was already a familiar format.

The first universities certainly made use of lectures, though they involved direct readings, with the idea of the lecturer contextualising and commenting on the work only later becoming the norm. Nowadays, lectures generally involve much more of a synthesis of material, often including the lecturer’s own research.

New students, when setting out on a new year of academic study, may find themselves unsure about the purpose of this ancient form of teaching. In this post, I’ll consider what lectures aim to do, and how students can best profit from them.