According to Luis Fernandez, a graduate student assistant, Dave Allan is a traditional lecturer who focuses less on audio-visual tools, videos, and animation than on being a "dynamic speaker," drawing on his own research and giving students "extra information that they can't find in the [web-based] notes as an incentive to show up to class."

Luis: Dave Allan uses a lot of case studies that he draws from his own research or that he finds on the web before class. He'll bring up a case study, website, or an article in class to illustrate the traditional material that the students can find on the course website. He told me a couple times that he likes to give students extra information that they can't find in the notes as an incentive to show up to class.

Dave himself said that, despite the web's role as a "terrific enabler of self-instruction," instructors should not "lose sight of how they communicate." To illustrate this point, he described a lecture that Professor Gayl Ness, sociology professor, gave that kept him on the "edge of his seat." The material that Ness covered in that lecture would not have been nearly as powerful if Dave had just read about it on the web.

Dave: The web is such a terrific enabler of self-instruction. You can go out there and get all this information and bring it back and integrate it. And I am not personally attached to the web as the delivery system for lecture material. For instance, Gayl Ness, [emeritus sociology professor] gave this fantastic lecture a while ago. I was just on the edge of my seat through that whole thing. He is still, I am sure, the absolute top person in his field. He has a tremendous amount of field experience and can talk about his experience in Thailand and Southeast Asia. He's seen these changes first-hand, and has, I think, a masterful integration of the topography and the social processes that are interacting and both drive it and result from it. I thought he was just a marvelous speaker. He spoke with passion and humor. If you were to say, "Let's put somebody up here who gives a heck of a good lecture, let's not worry about whether they are using computers or technology, they just give a heck of a good lecture," I would say it would be hard pressed to top that one. He used transparencies and he talked. The most powerful part about it was Ness, as a lecturer, not whether it was already packaged on the web or whether you put a glitzy Power Point presentation together. And that is that personal sense to communication [that we should] not lose sight of.

Some of the students we spoke with corroborated Dave's point, with respect to a particular type of lecture style. They pointed out that "how [instructors] communicate" and how students respond are equally important because they have a complementary effect on one another. Students must take a dynamic role that goes beyond just "taking the lecture notes that are already printed out and not adding anything to them" and instead need to actively "ask why." Beth, meanwhile, pointed out that Professor Kling, professor of Biology, inspires this kind of inquiry by asking questions with deceptively simple answers, thereby dissuading students from relying solely on their intuition, and forcing them to rely instead on careful thought and analysis.

Amy: Don't come into the course thinking, "Just sit and absorb," and "This is an easy course." Don't just take the lecture notes that are already printed out and not add anything to them. Add things and look for things that you're interested in and question everything. Always ask why--they give you a statistic, ask where that came from--don't just take anything [at face value]. Because a couple times, especially with Professor Kling, he would tell [us] something and everyone would say okay [without questioning], and then he'd say "No!"

Beth: He says, "Ask why. Don't you even wonder?"

Amy: He'll say, "You just believe that!?"