Stand and deliver

The more things change ... This edition is titled "Stand and Deliver" - a title that makes reference to the humble lecture. Reflecting on past editions of ITL for this "Best of" edition, there have been few articles that directly address lecturing. Why might this be? Do we know all the issues there are with lecturing? Have we resolved that there is nothing to be done, unless we have loads of money to make classes smaller and thus perhaps more conducive to student-centered learning?

In 2001, a team from the Teaching and Educational Development Unit at the University of Queensland conducted an AUTC funded project on Teaching Large Classes (see http://www.tedi.uq.edu.au/largeclasses/ for details and useful resources). As a part of the study, the team asked a group of teachers of large classes from many Australian universities what issues they faced in teaching large classes. The answers are probably no different to those that might have been given if the same question had been asked 20 years ago. The most common responses made by this group of lecturers were getting to know students, creating an interactive class and engaging students and maintaining their interest. Is this different from 20 years ago? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps the issues are the same but now we are more conscious of them; perhaps more teachers are now engaged in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Maybe we have learned more about what is good teaching and learning. In this issue we reproduce some of the articles from earlier editions that might be useful as a way of reflecting on the issues that you face as you 'stand and deliver'.