Lecture-Free Engineering Education

There are numerous references in the engineering-education literature to how effective “active learning” is, and how our traditional lecture style is not necessarily the most effective way to teach. The author tried active learning in my own classes for the last several years, mostly having the students work in small groups on examples, collecting questions, etc. However, the author found it very difficult to escape the “sage on the stage” lecture paradigm. In engineering, it seems as if the students need a certain amount of basic information before we can have effective discussion, group work, etc. Thus, this paper describes her experiment using pre-class video lectures to replace the traditional lecture, and to leave class time for active problem solving and exposure to engineering applications. The author was extremely pleased with the results in her classroom, and hope these ideas might help others try similar methods.