For decades, man has known the importance of communication. Today with various means by which one can communicate, it has become much easier, this is equally true for academic institutions. Therefore, it is vital to understand the different communication models so we can use them for enhancing communication in the different organizations. Below is a discussion of these models and how they can be implemented in an academic institution.
Lecture:
It is an oral presentation intended to present information or teach people about a particular subject. The criticisms of lectures are often summarized by a quote generally misattributed to Mark Twain:
“College is a place where a professor’s lecture notes go straight to the students’ lecture notes, without passing through the brains of either.”
Critics point out that lecturing is mainly a one-way method of communication that does not involve significant audience participation, often contrasted to active learning. This type of communication is linked to the linear model that is an early communication model created by Shannon and Weaver which visualizes the transfer of information as an act being done to the receiver by the sender. The linear model views communication as a one-way or linear process in which the speaker speaks and the listener listens. It consists of the sender encoding a message and channeling it to the receiver in the presence of noise. Thus in academics a lecturer is the sender and the students are the receivers.
It is an efficient, cheap way of conveying a topic to a large student body as it can be delivered as a weekly series designed to provide the basic framework of a course. The lecture is particularly suitable for introducing a subject to ensure that all students have the necessary understanding to learn a subject even with varied backgrounds, give direction and purpose to a demonstration or prepare students for a discussion.
Lectures however are a form of one-way speaker communication with...