Lefton Learning Community Teaching through Dialogue Robert J. Mulvaney, Department of Philosophy Lecture and discussion are the two most familiar teaching techniques in college and university classrooms, especially in the humanities. Occasionally we find drill and a kind of oneonone coaching, especially in skill courses such as foreign language and logic. But lecture, discussion, and some combination of the two, dominate the way we teach. Each has its strengths.
Lecture is the preferred method for the economical transmission of information.
Discussion favors student feedback, particularly where the issue is one of unsettled opinion, rather than accepted fact. Philosophical literature contains a striking rhetorical form reducible to neither of these procedures, although it bears some similarity to the discussion. I refer to dialogue, particularly as found in Plato's Dialogues. Some of these apparently were based upon real oral conversations in which Socrates was a paramount participant. Dialogue is found again and again in the history of philosophy.