Abstract
Though many educationists have repeatedly advocated small group teaching in higher education, there are few reports of the implementation of such teaching. The use of small groups has been widely recommended as a means of developing higher cognitive skills. The introduction of such activity requires a substantial reduction in the conventional program of lectures and tutorials. It would be difficult for a university lecturer wishing to introduce small group activity to find a range of descriptive case studies to use as a model. To provide such a model is the aim here.
In the case at hand, the lecture component of a senior undergraduate course in political theory taught by M. W. Jackson was substantially reduced and replaced by small group sessions. The strategies developed were systematically evaluated, mainly but not exclusively for formative purposes, by M. T. Prosser. In this article we describe the background, structure, and evaluation of this innovation, suggesting a number of problems that others may anticipate. We hope that this account will be of use to others in de-lecturing.
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Jackson, M.W., Prosser, M.T. De-lecturing. A case study of the implementation of small group teaching. High Educ 14, 651–663 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00136503
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00136503