Burgan points out that “being clueless in a discussion class is much more embarrassing and destructive of a student’s self confidence than struggling to understand in the anonymity of a lecture.” As a college student, I was often advised by well-meaning adults to sign-up for seminars rather than lectures in order to get “face time.” To be perfectly honest, though, the lecture format, far more than the noisy seminar, enabled me to think deeply about a topic rather than being distracted by poorly planned and redundant comments from peers (often aggravated by a teacher who is reluctant, for fear of being too top-down in terms of pedagogy, to deflect them).
anonymous on 10 Mar 14"TED (Technology/Design/Entertainment) is celebrating its 30 anniversary in March and has transformed the art of keynote speeches. Since TED "talks" are now viewed online more than two million times a day and smaller, independently run TEDx events are held in 145 countries, there's a good chance that people in every audience has seen a TED talk. That means, like it or not, your next presentation will be compared to TED!"
