Food for Thought Department

McKeachie's Teaching Tips, by Wilbert McKeachie, a classic guide for new teachers which has gone through many editions (I'm quoting here from my battered copy of the ninth), describes the most commonly cited fact about lectures: Research has found that after a lecture "students recalled 70 percent of the material covered in the first 10 minutes, and only 20 percent of the material covered in the last 10 minutes" (so if you insist on continuing to lecture all the time, make sure you speak really loudly during the last 10 minutes).

One study found that if a professor speaks 150 words a minute, students hear about 50 of them; another study determined that students are tuned out of a 50-minute lecture around 40 percent of the time.

--from Beyond Lecturing, James M. Lang, Chronicle of Higher Education, 29Sep06