A Good Lecture is an Active Learning Experience
There are so many things to pay attention to and so little time to pay attention to them all. How do instructors ensure the pedagogies they’ve chosen are maximizing engagement? Currently, there is a great battle being waged between two such pedagogies — lectures and active learning methods. Each considers the other to be faulty when it comes to helping people learn the best.
Or maybe, just maybe, there is value in both.
Dr. John Hattie is a researcher with many awards to his name for the work he has done in education. In 2009 he conducted a gigantic synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement in learning. He used effect size as his metric. What he found is that out of hundreds of factors that could influence student achievement, almost all of those had a positive effect. There were small (0.2), medium (0.4) and large (0.6) effect size categories. Hattie had a hinge point (0.4) set where anything above that effect size was said to have an above average positive effect. An effect size of 1.0 or higher would be equal to at least one standard deviation. Imagine a jump from a grade of C to a grade of A.
What was found? An active learning technique known as the jigsaw method comes in at a whopping 1.2. Other active learning strategies in the high effect size category include classroom discussion (0.82), reciprocal teaching (0.74), problem solving teaching (0.68) and concept mapping (0.64). Also making the high category is direct instruction (0.60) of which lecturing is often associated. However, Hattie’s 2009 book Visible Learning, which came about from his meta-meta analysis of the achievement research states that direct instruction involves seven major steps:
1. Know what you want learners to have at the end of the direct instruction (i.e., learning target)
2. What does success look like and how will learners be held accountable.
3. It should be engaging and there must be something in there to “hook” the learner.
4. Input (e.g., all lecture? Pictures? Videos?), modeling (i.e., examples of what the standard looks like) and checking for understanding need to be considered.
5. Learners practice under the supervision of the instructor and get feedback about their progress (i.e., guided practice)
6. There is planned closure at the end of the instruction to help solidify learning.
7. Independent practice, which is spaced to maximize learning, is provided.
Now, direct instruction offered with even a few of those steps is a long way away from what many of us may have in mind of a lecture. Think someone standing at the front of a room, possibly with a slide deck, talking to a group (not with the group) for an hour or more. That kind of lecture may have never worked. Hattie’s research doesn’t say. A question posted on Corwin Visible Learning Metax Platform asks what the effect size of lectures is. And apparently Dr. Hattie responded to that question saying:
“You are right — there is no meta-analysis on the lecture format that I can find. And given there is much tell and practice, much teacher-talk this is surprising. My view is that the format can be efficient as long as it is part of a sequence that also involves hearing how the students are receiving and understanding, seeing this conceptions and misconceptions …And the assessment has the tight proportions of surface and deeper understanding”.
Okay, so I’m interpreting that to suggest that Hattie supports what I would call an active lecture. That is, there is interaction from instructor to learner but there will also be interaction from learner to instructor and learner to learner. In fact, you can find just such a pedagogy, commonly referred to as an interactive lecture, which is a combination of engaging lecture and active learning methods.
Call it active lecturing or interactive lecturing or simply just a good lecture. Whatever you call it, I think we just need to recognize it has to ensure that learners are responsible for taking an active role in their own learning during that lecture. Next time around, I’ll talk more about each of the two components that make up an interactive lecture — the engaging lecture and the active learning methods. How do you make a lecture engaging? What active learning methods are best for solidifying learning in a lecture?
