When I first came into university teaching virtually all mathematics lectures consisted of “chalk and talk” with the lecturer writing notes on the board which were copied down by the students. Apart from a few perfunctory inquiries of the students as to whether there were any questions then there was virtually no interaction with the students present. The bigger the class then the less chance there was for any interaction. Some thirty years later it seems to me that little has changed apart from the chalkboard being replaced in some instances by the OHP. From the start I found the fact that lectures consisted largely of note copying especially when it is just text a somewhat redundant and frustrating process. It was no wonder that students complained that lectures were boring. I have therefore tried at several times in my career to base lectures on a set book. There were problems here of finding the right book because of syllabus constraints. This was rarely a success: if I moved away from the book the students complained the material was not in the book and if I stuck religiously to the text then there was little opportunity for employing any active teaching using the discovery method. The only time it worked well was when the students were asked to work through a set book in a self-study mode supported by specially prepared materials and periodic tests which formed the starting point for one-to-one tutorials.
