Making lectures memorable: A cognitive perspective.

Lectures have been a cornerstone of medical education since the introduction of a discipline based curricular model more than two hundred years ago. Recently this instructional strategy has come under criticism because of its reliance on passive learning. There are still many medical schools that cover content predominantly through lectures due to its feasibility. With the introduction of the flipped classrooms, lectures have been given a new lease of life. Improving cognitive imprinting during lectures would enhance retrieval and promote long term storage. Simplifying the content reduces the cognitive load of the information being received and makes it more meaningful hence more memorable. To make learning memorable, rehearsal should be built into the sessions. With the exponential increase in online learning, the need for online learning technologies will require a generation of a large amount of asynchronous video content which should ideally be truly meaningful and memorable, and inspirational to our students.