Make Lectures More Interactive

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.