How to Combine Active Learning Methods within a Lecture to Promote Interactivity and Engagement
This is the third instalment on the topic of interactive lectures. In the first instalment I discussed the relationship between lecturing and direct instruction and looked at some qualities of good direct instruction. The summary there is that good direct instruction is an interactive experience between instructor and learners and is engaging for the learners. In the second instalment I looked at what makes an engaging lecture engaging. Today, I’ll look at what learning methodologies work well when combined with a lecture to make that lecture interactive.
A lecture is good for something but it’s not going to be good for everything that you want your learners to grasp. In his book What’s the Use of Lectures? Dr. Donald Bligh notes that available evidence indicates that lectures are good for transmitting information but that they are not the best at
1. Promoting thought
2. Changing attitudes
3. Teaching behavioural skills
More active learning methods are best for those he says. He also mentions that there are confounding factors like learner motivation and attention that must be considered when deciding how to teach a topic. In short, we should be instructing in ways that reflect the ways we know we as humans learn. And one of the most restrictive factors in our ability to learn is in the limitations of our short-term and working-memory. We can only process so much new or complex information at one time. That in and of itself is a good reason not to be lecturing to our learners in one long and continuous segment without stopping.
There is also the value of feedback to us as instructors on our lecture. Pausing even to ask a question to check for current understanding on what has been presented so far can be valuable. You could start talking to your learners at 11:00 am and not stop until 11:50 am. You might have presented that particular lecture hundreds of times. You know it inside out. You are passionate about it and it shows. People seem engaged. The jokes you insert still get laughs so you must be knocking it out of the park as usual, right? Well, why not just ask the learners and see of the teaching you’ve done just how much learning has actually happened.
Bligh also mentions the reality that an instructor may have multiple objectives for one class or session with learners. For that reason, it is good to understand the purpose or learning outcome of each and then find the best method possible for getting that information across to learners.
And what does Donald Bligh recommend as teaching methods to use to supplement lecturing’s weaknesses? Dialogue. His book published in 2000 focuses almost completely around methods that involve the instructor asking questions of learners or learners asking questions of the instructor or learners interacting with other learners in groups. He shows existing research to support the value of questions and of small group discussions to promote thought and the potential for attitudinal change. And his advice, that if you want learners to improve in some skill than you need to have them practice that skill, seems obvious enough.
While pausing to ask a question, or ask for questions, or instructing learners to turn to their neighbour and discuss a point is easy enough to do, there are certainly no shortage of novel and interesting variations on that theme. Teaching and Learning Services (TLS) at McGill University provides a decent framework for organizing those multitudes of active learning exercises. The categories into which they have separated active learning methods include:
1. Class preparedness
2. Discussion generation
3. Interactive lectures
4. Group work
5. Problem-solving
6. Knowledge application
7. Synthesis and reflection
8. Misconceptions
Take the interactive lectures category for example. Activities in that category include things like:
· 10–2: Lecture for ten minutes. Then have learners to pair up to discuss what they have learned. Then ask if there are any questions. Repeat.
· Picture Prompt: Show learners an image related to theme of lecture. Ask learners to identify/explain it, or write about it using terms from the lecture or name the processes/concepts shown.
· Updating Notes: Every 10–15 minutes pause your lecture and allow learners a few minutes to compare notes, fill in gaps and develop joint questions. Ask if there are any questions. Repeat.
It’s a great resource with lots of neat ideas. If you’re looking for more active learning methods, here’s another ten from the Centre for Teaching and Learning at Brigham Young University.
