Background Information
An unbreakable habit, the use of traditional lectures in colleges and universities is an inadequate teaching method; the inadequacy of this teaching style is evident in student academic outcomes. Recent studies show that the use of lectures correlates with a larger student population. Additionally, the problem of effective college teaching extends to include the relationship between student and teacher. Because the importance of success in higher education is highly stressed, and even more so today, identifying better alternatives to the traditional lecture is currently a hot research topic.
Because lectures are convenient in teaching larger student bodies, there has been more investigation into different variations on the traditional lecture. Many have found the solution to college education in the problem-based learning teaching method, "a learning environment where problems drive the learning", because of its overall benefits (Cooper, Olson, and Lougheed 734).
