The demise of the lecture--the rise of real education?

Today in the New England Journal of Medicine I read an editorial that discussed how lectures are being phased out in medical school education. I was, at first, a little bit appalled. Why would they eliminate an educational method that worked so well for me and my generation of doctors?

Or did it? I actually remember only a few things now from lectures, and all of those things don't support the idea that lectures were an effective way of teaching. I remember vividly how I would fall asleep and write progressively more poetic and less linear notes in my binder. How I would startle myself awake, causing heavy textbooks to fly in the air. I remember the time when the professor showed us the structure of vitamin B12 and I considered learning it, just for grins, and decided not to. I remember formulating questions for the lecturer that would display such minuscule understanding of the material that he or she would actually understand how deeply we students had been left in the dust. But I don't remember learning anything. I'm sure I did, at least eventually, when I highlighted and rewrote my lecture notes and read the material in the book. I'm not sure lectures were a good use of my time, or that of the eminent scientists and clinicians who were trying to teach us.

I do remember learning things in the laboratory. I remember learning about diptheria as we carefully sucked virulent Corynebacteria diphtheriae into glass pipets to examine it under the microscope. I remember using machines to understand sine waves and the concept of gain in order to learn how monitoring of vital signs could go wrong. I remember working with a group of 4 medical students to dissect a human body and how I worked with my professor-attending to reveal obscure diagnoses of real people. I particularly remember how a classmate and I decided to learn half the material in a certain class really well and teach it to the other person, creating a typed handout with jokes and cartoons and completely acing the essay exam on that subject.

What particularly bothered me about this idea of getting rid of lectures was the thought that students would have no structure to their learning, that they would just bop around aimlessly trying to absorb the enormity of medical science. Reading on, however, I realized that what is intended to replace the lecture are shorter and smaller doses of facts interspersed with questions and group work and cases that integrate the facts with problem solving. Medical students will still need to get up in the morning and come together in classes, but the classes will be different. The author mentions that students who hear an eloquently presented lecture may feel that they understand the material, but on further questioning realize that they have only a very superficial grasp. This is intuitively true and I know I have seen it, meaning that even the most clearly delivered lecture probably isn't very useful from a practical standpoint.

A few years ago I attended a talk about how to give a talk. In the talk the speaker said that most people remember only 1 (or is it 3?) things from a lecture. I also remember that he said to practice in front of a mirror which I tried but will never do. I don't remember what else he said, except that he thought Steve Jobs gave a great talk. He was definitely right about the number of things most people remember, though I don't quite remember what he said.

The conclusion of the article about saying goodbye to lectures was that they really are going away, at least in their long and fact filled monologing glory. Good teaching may involve a speaker and a large group of listeners, but will include shorter and more easily absorbed facts interspersed with questions to ascertain understanding.

New methods of learning are based not only on the fact that humans have limitations in their ability to absorb information, but also on the exponentially increasing amount of it as communication and technology co-evolve to deepen our potential understanding of the natural world. It is no longer practical to expect a person to keep an adequate body of knowledge to practice medicine in his or her brain. A couple of teachers of bedside ultrasound, Mike Mallin and Matt Dawson spoke about "just in time" rather than "just in case" learning at a meeting a few years ago, arguing that we remember and learn things better when we access the information at a time when it is relevant. They created a phone app called "1 minute ultrasound" which gives a person just the information they need to perform a bedside ultrasound exam right before they go into a patient's room. "Just in time" learning. I know that I would never have remembered the basic science behind Acute Intermittent Porphyria had I not had a patient suffering from it who needed me to mix up an ink-black orphan drug to abort her painful episode. In fact, the disease was so complex and obscure that I had sworn NOT to learn about it since I would likely never use the information in practice.

Not all learning can happen "just in time" since a certain knowledge base is necessary to filter the information a patient provides in order to be thinking in the right general area. Also some emergency conditions require immediate action, though I'm often surprised how easy it is to brush up on a condition by using my cell phone, even in dire situations. A fourth year medical student pulled out a Palm Pilot 15 years ago when a patient asked about a drug interaction. As I promised I would check a reference on it, she had the answer. I am eternally grateful for my first introduction to a peripheral brain that expanded my own. Now I have volumes of updated information on any condition known to man in my pocket.

I know that we will cling to the lecture for many years, in medicine and in other learning situations. Big changes happen slowly. As I partake of them I will appreciate the art and the effort that goes into their creation and sense that they are a noble tradition. I will try to learn more than 1 (or is it 3?) things from each one, but I won't beat myself up when I don't. As a tool for learning or teaching, though, I may be about ready to say "Goodbye."