Interactive Lectures
This teaching tip offers some ideas on how to make your lectures more interactive, and thus keep your students more engaged.
Within interactive lectures professors typically lecture for a portion of the class, then provide students an opportunity to apply the content covered. This process is repeated throughout the class time. Activities used to provide application opportunities include:
- student discussion
- asking students to write a summary of what was covered
- a hands-on experience
- a question-and-answer session
- a small quiz
- a case study, requiring students to provide a solution using new content
Technologies such as Poll Everywhere and Kahoot! are great tools to implement some of the above strategies. Because lecturing is often 15-20 minutes before content is applied, student engagement is often high in an interactive lecture.
Interactive lectures also allow professors to be more flexible with their teaching points, letting students guide the learning more through real-time feedback and generation of new questions. The interactivity within the lecture often promotes a transferability of information to problem-solving skills (Gulpinar & Yegen, 2005).
Interactive lecturing does require planning and expert knowledge to most effectively organize the material. Although this is the case, do not let this prevent you from developing an interactive lecture, as learning is often very high!
Quick Tips for using the Interactive Lecture
- Organize your lesson into modules/sections to cover each teaching point, making each section no longer than 20 minutes before an interactive activity.
- Pick a variety of interactive techniques to implement throughout the lesson to keep engagement high.
- Promote problem-solving, using the material, within each interactive activity. You want to guide students on HOW TO THINK ABOUT the material and apply the theories to a variety of situations, promoting transfer of knowledge.
Learn more
For more ideas, see:
- https://www.unmc.edu/facdev/resources/new-faculty-resources/teaching/interactive-lectures.html
- http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/110127/chapters/Section-1@-Introducing-the-Interactive-Lecture.aspx
- Are We having Fun Yet? Developing Interactive Lectures and Presentations: https://www.slideshare.net/infolit_group/are-we-having-fun-yet-developing-interactive-lectures-and-presentations-jackson
- Gulpinar, M. A., & Yegen, B.C. (2005). Interactive lecturing for meaningful learning in large groups. Medical Teacher, 27, 590-594.
- Harrington, C. & Zakrajsek, T. (2017). Dynamic Lecturing: Research-based strategies to enhance lecture effectiveness. Sterling: VA: Stylus Publishing Company.
Submitted by:
Kimberly A. Whiter, M.S., MLS(ASCP) CMDirector of Faculty Development and Interprofessional EducationAssistant Professor, Jefferson College of Health SciencesInstructor, Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine
This work is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) License.
For more information please contact:
Michael Johnson, Teaching and Learning Consultant