During the pandemic, many instructors valued the interactive features of videoconference tools, like breakout rooms, integrated chat, emoji and reactions, and polling. These tools allowed students to connect, react, and participate and offered instructors a sense of student engagement during remote class sessions. Whether a class is remote or in person, periodically incorporating interactivity within a lecture can help students prepare to receive information, listen actively, use new information, or process what they’ve heard (Barkley 2018). In short, adding interactivity helps students direct their attention, apply new knowledge, and practice new skills.
Now that we have returned to in-person classrooms and lecture halls, how can we continue to incorporate more interactivity into our teaching? How can we do this in large-enrollment lectures? Small strategies can help make lectures of any size feel more connected, engaging, and relevant for students.
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Getting Started
To get started with revising your lectures for interactivity, consider two areas of focus:
- Revising the goals and content of a class meeting
- Adopting new strategies (and maybe technology) to enable interactivity
Making lecture more interactive may require rethinking what happens in class and out of class. Often lower-order thinking activities, like taking in factual information, can be started by students on their own outside of class. This includes activities like reading and taking notes. Having much of this activity take place outside of class meetings frees meeting time to be used for more interactive and higher-order thinking activities that can reinforce and build upon students’ work outside of class. Review the examples below from L&S disciplines for more information.
An instructor spends the first several minutes of meeting time reviewing key concepts in lecture. Then the instructor presents a graph or chart that relates to these key concepts and asks students to discuss it with 1-2 students near them. Students summarize the graph in one sentence, and identify one question about the data presented. As they work, one person in the group is responsible for using a device to enter their responses into a Google Form. At the end of 5 minutes, the instructor displays the anonymous responses and leads a brief lecture interpreting the results and connecting the graph to other course content. The remainder of the lecture builds on the concepts introduced in this graph.
- Revising goals and content: Instead of using the entire lecture to present information, the instructor reviews essential concepts and then asks students to practice applying what they learned and to make connections to new concepts. This allows the instructor to assess what students do and do not understand, and then correct and reinforce learning with a lecture based on student input. This instructor is presenting less new information to students through their lecture, but is reaching higher-order learning outcomes, as students are analyzing and discussing data in place of listening.
- Adopting new strategies and/or technology: This instructor added a new strategy of presenting data to students and pairing them for discussion prior to a lecture segment, which required adding an additional lecture slide and allowing time for group work. This instructor also created a Google Form to be able to anonymously gather, and then display, student work. An audience response tool, like TopHat, or a Canvas Quiz could also be used.
At the end of the week, students complete a short reflective writing assignment about a documentary they watched or a field experience in which they participated earlier in the week. At the start of a Monday lecture meeting, students spend 10 minutes in assigned small groups sharing their reflections and then identifying one question or common theme to share. The instructor begins class by calling on several student groups to share, and then makes connections between student responses, last week’s content, and the upcoming lecture content. The instructor also uses lecture outlines to present students with concepts to listen for during the lecture.
- Revising goals and content: Instead of the instructor carrying the burden of reminding students of last week’s content and activities, the instructor encourages students to share this task and recall recent content and work before beginning new concepts. This instructor is helping students activate their memory to recall content on their own before connecting new content to past content via listening to lecture. The lecture outline supports these tasks by providing students with consistent structures to help them recall information.
- Adopting new strategies and/or technology: This instructor added a new strategy of providing students time to work in groups, reviewing recent work and class content, and making connections or asking questions. This instructor also uses a Guided Notes technique that requires adapting their lecture notes into an outline and sharing it with students via Canvas prior to the lecture. This approach does not use any new technologies.
Midway through a lecture, students complete 2-3 questions asking them to correctly identify styles, techniques, creators, or other important details about works of art. After responding to each question, students consider how confident they are in their response and discuss the correct answer with students near them with the goal of elaborating on how to identify the correct response. The instructor can then reveal the correct response to students as well as how they would identify the correct response and optionally incorporate student input or additional discussion. This activity serves as a knowledge check before moving on to additional content, and allows students to practice skills they will need for future quizzes and exams.
- Revising goals and content: Instead of using the entire lecture to present information, the instructor uses a small amount of time to ask students to practice applying what they learned previously. This allows the instructor to assess what students do and do not understand, and provides practice for future assessments.
- Adopting new strategies and/or technology: This instructor added a new strategy of testing students’ recall of information, which required adding an additional lecture slide and allowing time for group work. This instructor could create a Google Form, TopHat questions, or a Canvas Quiz to be able to gather, and then display, student responses. However, if preferred the instructor could also use only a slide to present the question and answer and not gather student responses with a new technology.
Choosing Interactivity for Your Lecture
Adding interactivity to your lecture can accomplish different goals with your students (Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, 2012). Are you interested in helping students master foundational concepts, reinforce new learning, correct misconceptions, make connections between concepts, practice thinking out loud, apply their learning to new situations, or extend their learning in creative ways? Considering your learning goals for your students first can help you choose one interactive strategy to try that aligns with your goals. Make note of gaps you observe in student progress, as well as what might motivate and inspire your students. In addition to the examples above, review specific strategies below that can apply to multiple disciplines.
Directory of Interactive Lecture Techniques
Source: Barkley, E. F. & Major, C. H. (2018). Interactive Lecturing: a Handbook for College Faculty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Available online through the UW Libraries.
Interactive lecture techniques are organized below for easy scanning. You can also make your own copy of the directory, with a column for taking notes.
Actively Preparing |
Helps students learn by having them… |
Complexity for the instructor is… |
Detailed explanation is available on… |
| Active Reading Documents | Follow a detailed process for comprehending and applying information from a reading by answering the questions in a teacher-created document. | Planning: Moderate
Material Prep: High Implementation: Low | Page 200 |
| Know Wonder Learned | Complete a handout that asks them to list what they know about a topic, wonder about a topic, and have learned about the topic. | Planning: Low
Material Prep: Low Implementation: Low | Page 204 |
| Two-Minute Question Development Talks | Pair up for two-minute talks where they discuss the out-of-class assignments and develop questions for the lecture. | Planning: Low
Material Prep: Low Implementation: Moderate | Page 209 |
| Individual Readiness Assurance Tests | Complete a series of questions on previously assigned reading material at the start of a class session. | Planning: Moderate
Material Prep: Moderate Implementation: Low | Page 212 |
Anticipating New Information |
Helps students learn by having them… |
Complexity for the instructor is… |
Detailed explanation is available on… |
| Update Your Classmates | Write a memo to a student, real or fictional, who missed class the day before to describe the missing information and explain why it might be important to the upcoming lecture. | Planning: Low
Material Prep: Low Implementation: Low | Page 217 |
| Sentence Stem Predictions | Receive a sentence stem to complete that prompts them to predict information to come in the lecture. | Planning: Moderate
Material Prep: Moderate Implementation: Low | Page 221 |
| Guess and Confirm | Write down facts they expect to learn from lecture, then check off the list during lecture, and at the end discuss what they expected to hear but didn’t and ask questions about it. | Planning: Low
Material Prep: Low Implementation: Low | Page 227 |
| Preview Guide | Receive a set of statements about the topic and indicate whether they agree or disagree with the statement; at the end of the lecture, they indicate whether they changed their mind. | Planning: High
Material Prep: Low Implementation: Low | Page 232 |
Listening for Information |
Helps students learn by having them… |
Complexity for the instructor is… |
Detailed explanation is available on… |
| Advance Organizers | Refer to an organizational template to help them understand the structure of information to come in the lecture and then complete the organizational framework during the lecture. | Planning: Moderate
Material Prep: Moderate Implementation: Low | Page 238 |
| Lecture Bingo | Mark on bingo cards when they hear an answer to a question. | Planning: Moderate
Material Prep: Moderate Implementation: High | Page 245 |
| Listening Teams | Work in teams, each of which has a specific assignment and discussion prompt for the day’s lecture, after which each team reports out. | Planning: Low
Material Prep: Low Implementation: Moderate | Page 249 |
| Live-Tweet Lecture* | Tweet the lecture to share important information they are learning using a hashtag provided by the instructor. | Planning: Low
Material Prep: Low Implementation: Low | Page 253 |
Taking Notes |
Helps students learn by having them… |
Complexity for the instructor is… |
Detailed explanation is available on… |
| Guided Notes | Complete during the lecture a framework of incomplete notes provided by the instructor. | Planning: High
Material Prep: Moderate Implementation: Low | Page 260 |
| Cued Notes | Listen for cues from the professor and then record lecture notes related to the cue. | Planning: Moderate
Material Prep: Moderate Implementation: Moderate | Page 264 |
| Coded Notes | Use a system of codes (such as * = important point) to interact with their notes. | Planning: Moderate
Material Prep: Moderate Implementation: Low | Page 269 |
| Note-Taking Pairs | Work with a partner at the end of the lecture to compare notes and build a better set of notes. | Planning: Low
Material Prep: Low Implementation: Moderate | Page 274 |
| Sketch Notes | Recast lecture notes into a set of visual notes that use single words or phrases combined with simple images. | Planning: Low
Material Prep: Low Implementation: Moderate | Page 278 |
Rehearsing Information |
Helps students learn by having them… |
Complexity for the instructor is… |
Detailed explanation is available on… |
| Translate That! | Explain in their own words the fact or concept that the instructor just presented. | Planning: Low
Material Prep: Low Implementation: Moderate | Page 289 |
| Think-Pair-Share | Think about a prompt question, pair up to discuss, and then share with the whole class. | Planning: Low
Material Prep: Low Implementation: Low | Page 293 |
| Snap Shots | Think about and then choose a response to a multiple-choice question posed by the lecturer, and then try to convince their assigned partner that their response is correct; the instructor then provides the answer so that students can assess the accuracy of their understanding. | Planning: Moderate
Material Prep: Low Implementation: Low | Page 297 |
Applying Information |
Helps students learn by having them… |
Complexity for the instructor is… |
Detailed explanation is available on… |
| Thick and Thin Questions | Write down two types of questions about the lecture content: Thin Questions that can be answered directly from the lecture and Thick Questions that require students to think beyond the lecture. | Planning: Low
Material Prep: Low Implementation: Low | Page 304 |
| Support a Statement | Locate in their lecture notes details, examples, or data to support a statement provided by the instructor. | Planning: Moderate
Material Prep: Low Implementation: Moderate | Page 309 |
| Intrigue Journal | List and describe the five most interesting, controversial, or resonant ideas they heard in the lecture, indicating what they would like to learn more about. | Planning: Low
Material Prep: Low Implementation: Moderate | Page 313 |
| Real-World Applications | Analyze a theory or concept from the lecture and then figure out how to apply it in the realm of practical or actual experience. | Planning: Moderate
Material Prep: Moderate Implementation: Low | Page 317 |
Checking Understanding |
Helps students learn by having them… |
Complexity for the instructor is… |
Detailed explanation is available on… |
| Pre-Post Freewrite | Write for about five minutes, indicating what they already know about that day’s topic; students write again at the end of class, and the difference between the two writings should demonstrate what they have learned. | Planning: Low
Material Prep: Low Implementation: Low | Page 322 |
| One-Sentence Summary | Summarize a lecture in a single sentence. | Planning: Low
Material Prep: Low Implementation: Low | Page 327 |
| 3-2-1 | Jot down and share with a partner or in a small group three ideas or issues presented; two examples of uses of the idea or information covered; and one unresolved or remaining question or area of possible confusion. | Planning: Low
Material Prep: Low Implementation: Low | Page 333 |
| RSQC2 | Follow a structured process (recall, summarize, question, comment, and connect) to pull together their understanding of a given lecture. | Planning: Low
Material Prep: Low Implementation: Low | Page 336 |
Reflecting on Thinking |
Helps students learn by having them… |
Complexity for the instructor is… |
Detailed explanation is available on… |
| Punctuated Lecture | Ask questions about what they are doing at a given moment during a class. | Planning: Moderate
Material Prep: Moderate Implementation: Low | Page 343 |
| Post-Lecture Knowledge Survey | Review questions and rate their confidence in answering them. | Planning: Low
Material Prep: Moderate Implementation: Low | Page 347 |
| Lecture Wrapper | Write what they think the three most-important ideas of the lecture were on an index card, hand the cards in, and then compare their responses to the ideas the instructor shares were the most important. | Planning: Low
Material Prep: Moderate Implementation: Low | Page 352 |
| Lecture Engagement Logs | Keep running logs of their preparation, participation, and reflection in lecture courses. | Planning: Low
Material Prep: Low Implementation: Low | Page 356 |
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References & Further Reading
- Barkley, E. F. (2018). Interactive Lecturing: A Handbook for College Faculty. United States: Wiley. Available through the UW Libraries.
- Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. (2012). ABLConnect: Activity-Based Learning. Retrieved April 22, 2022, from https://ablconnect.harvard.edu/
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Maria Widmer for initially synthesizing and sharing ideas from Interactive Lecturing. Her thoughtful collaboration has informed our work.
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