Beltane Planting Moon
I have begun reading various books I have collected about Ovid. In Ovid Recalled, a book I started today, I found an odd piece of random knowledge that really made me stop.
In giving an example of outdated practices that persist in cultures the author, a Cambridge don, used the university lecture. The lecture began as a work around because texts were not readily available in sufficient quantities, nor were they affordable. After publishing became commonplace, the rationale for the lecture no longer existed. My guess is you sat through as many as I did.
Now this made me think about the recent hooplah about massive open online courses or moocs. One criticism of moocs from various university faculties is that they ruin the interactive nature of–you guessed it–the lecture. All this reminds us that there is nothing fixed about professors and lectures and classrooms on physical campuses. It just represents the most convenient to deliver education based on one set of assumptions; that is, gather students physically then disperse them among classrooms.
We can and should rethink all these assumptions.
