Proceedings of the 2013 AAEE Conference, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, Copyright © Scott Daniel, Alex Mazzolini, and Llewellyn Mann, 2013 Perceptions of the effectiveness of lectures in improving student conceptual understanding Scott Daniel, Alex Mazzolini, and Llewellyn Mann Swinburne University of Technology Corresponding Author Email: sdaniel@swin.edu.au CONTEXT “Developing students’ conceptual understanding” was ranked highest as the ‘purpose of a lecture’ in a previous survey of academics from a range of disciplines at Swinburne University of Technology. Traditional transmissive lecturing remains the norm at most institutions, despite the evidence that this mode achieves little in terms of student learning. So why does this teaching mode still persist? What are the perceptions of its effectiveness, and how do these depend on academics’ familiarity with education research? PURPOSE In this study we investigated to what extent engineering education researchers perceive that “developing students’ conceptual understanding” is achieved in lectures. What evidence do they use to explain their views? And what are their perceptions of the attitudes of their colleagues? APPROACH An online survey was designed to rate the extent that respondents felt “developing students’ conceptual understanding” was achieved in lectures, and why. They were also asked what responses they felt their colleagues (i.e. presumably those not conducting education research) would give, and to provide some demographic information. Respondents were recruited from AAEE 2012 Conference participants. OUTCOMES Thirty-seven conference participants responded to the survey. Although there was a wide range of responses, on average respondents felt their colleagues would rate lectures as more effective in developing students’ conceptual understanding (5.9 out of 10) than the respondents did themselves (5.2). This disparity became more marked with more experienced respondents, in particular with increasing education research experience. CONCLUSIONS Although respondents from a previous survey identified “developing students’ conceptual understanding” as the main purpose of lectures, respondents in this study did not rate lectures as being very effective at achieving this purpose. Maybe this is not surprising given the weight of evidence that transmissive teaching has little effect on student understanding. So the question remains: why do lectures continue to be so popular? Perhaps more interestingly, with increasing education research experience, there is a perception of a growing divide between engineering education researchers and their more discipline-focused colleagues about the effectiveness of lectures. Real or not, this divide poses an obstacle to meaningful discussions about education reform and dissemination of education research. KEYWORDS Lecturing, perceptions, conceptual understanding