In the age of computer-based learning, lecturing gets treated like Model-T Ford. Don't be deceived; lecturing remains a staple of the academy and it's likely to remain so for quite some time. University class sizes have swelled in the wake of budget cuts that have delayed (or canceled) faculty searches. A recent study of eleven Ohio four-year colleges reveals that 25 percent of introductory classes have more than 120 students and only a shortage of teaching assistants has kept the percentage that low. At the University of Massachusetts, 12 percent of all classes have enrollments of over 50 and lectures of over 200 are quite common. As long as universities operate on the assembly-line model, lecturing will remain integral to the educational process.
But even if enormous class sizes aren't the norm at your college, lecturing is still an art you should master. It doesn't matter how technologically adroit one is or how many non-instructor-directed whistles and bells get crammed into a course, at some point every professor lectures, even if it's just giving instructions or recapping a completed exercise. (I'll address online classes in the future, but let's just say that you'd be wise to incorporate lecture-like components into these as well.)
Lots of new professors harbor anxiety about lecturing, which is understandable, given that it shows up in most top-10 lists of American phobias. The ability to give an engaging lecture doesn't come shrink-wrapped with your graduate diploma. Nor does it necessarily come with experience; some of the smartest and most seasoned professors I've ever encountered are horrible lecturers. That said, lecturing is so integral to successful college teaching that it's a form of masochism and sadism to not become good at it.
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