Even among the Biochemistry majors many are only in the Science faculty because they were not accepted by the Medical faculty. This imposes serious motivational problems. An additional problem is that the students majoring in some other subjects are overloaded, being subjected to 20 lectures and four afternoon practical sessions per week. Because of the low level of student participation information gained during the lecture is rapidly lost unless consolidated by other learning activities. The value of the lecture as the primary medium for those students who have language difficulties is also questionable.
Lectures are therefore an inefficient medium from the student's point of view.
We do not have either. Feedback from the students is essential in order to ensure that the material presented is being adequately and correctly assimilated by the students. One way of obtaining feedback is by having the students occasionally submit written work. However the drudgery of marking this work coupled with the long delay between submission and return, diminishes the value of the exercise. In our opinion the most effective spur to learning in the traditional course is the class test.