An Update on “Death by Lecture”
Fred Wilson posted yesterday on a topic that we understand very well here in Tartu — the difference between “presentations” and “discussions”. I began to think about the differences than a decade ago when we needed to build a professional training curriculum that met “judicial training needs”. We quickly found out that most “presentations or “lectures” simply did not meet those needs. We struggled for quite some time to figure out ways to develop and promote better methods — -and of course, all of them revolved around discussion rather than presentation.
There is a paradigm here — presentations are like books — reference materials. We can use these as articulations of “standards”. But they do not develop or raise standards. They simply describe and justify where they are now — even if too low.
In his post, Fred refers more concretely to a board meeting at “Return Path”. This quote from the Return Path CEO caught my eye
We thought that the best way to foster two-way dialog in the meeting was to change the paradigm away from a presentation
Right — and how about moving the entire adult learning paradigm away from listening to presentations and towards ongoing interactive discussion around what we do?
We had that experience the other day at the Estonian Euromanagement Institute discussing conflict management. The group formed a circle (standing) and we talked about our life experiences. Everyone shined. Everyone gained. Me too.