Making your lectures more effective

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Making your lecturesmore effective
John Sloman Economics Network
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Tell me and I will forgetShow me and I will
rememberInvolve me and I will understandStep
back and I will act (Chinese proverb)
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I said that I'd taught him, not that he'd learned
I've taught Snoopy to whistle
I can't hear him whistle
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Plan

1. What makes a good lecture?
2. Lecturing and student learning
3. Student preparation for lectures
4. Lecture structure and content
5. Effective presentation
6. Activities and breaks
7. Overcoming barriers to active learning
8. Building on the lecture

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1. What makes a good lecture?

• What would make a bad lecture for your students?

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What makes a good lecture?

• Problems with traditional lectures
• Too much focus on content to be covered
• Not enough focus on student learning
• Focus on student learning
• Recording
• Motivation
• Involvement
• Understanding
• A lecture exercise

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2. Lecturing and student learning

• Student learning in lectures .
• What are the intended learning outcomes?
• Are popular lectures good lectures?
• Entertaining?
• Spoonfeeding?
• Learning styles
• Visual, aural, conceptual encourage variety
• Active and passive learning .
• Deep and surface learning

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2. Lecturing and student learning

• Surface learning encouraged by
• Heavy workload
• Lack of independence
• Passive learning
• Assessment encouraging recall
• Lack of interest
• Deep learning encouraged by
• Active involvement
• Relating to experience
• Choices
• Progressive subject development
• Applications

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3. Student preparation

• Getting background information
• Data
• Case material
• Revisiting previous material
• Start with a test
• Getting students to identify issues
• Use of the VLE
• Assigning prior reading
• Again, start with a test

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4. Lecture structure and content

• Clear structure
• Mapping / overview
• Issues to be addressed
• Not too much material .
• Examples
• Mixing presentation with student activities

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4. Lecture structure and content

• Lecture session plan

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5. Effective presentation

• Communication
• Keep in eye contact with your audience
• Project yourself
• Pace
• Speed of talking diction
• Coverage
• Notes .
• What do you want students to do?
• Writing versus listening
• What do you give them?

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5. Effective presentation

• Using PowerPoint / OHTs / board
• How much to write?
• Do you want students to copy?
• Talking and writing on the board?
• Talking over PowerPoint slides
• Posting notes in advance?
• Presenting graphs and equations
• Make it active
• Partially complete diagrams/equations
• Careful use of colour

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5. Effective presentation

• Some PowerPoint tips
• Dont put too much on the screen
• Use colour and design carefully
• Animated diagrams
• Moving from screen to screen cntl slide
• Use black screen (press b)
• Hyperlinking
• Avoid death by PowerPoint?

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5. Effective presentation

• Ways of making your lecture more effective

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6. Activities and breaks

• Do not talk for the whole hour!
• Diminishing returns
• Attention wanes
• Comprehension and learning declines
• Give students things to do that aid their
  learning
• Dont worry about not covering so much
• Even give them a break

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6. Activities and breaks

• Examples of activitiesand breaks

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6. Activities and breaks

• Activities
• Tests/quizzes (use of PRS?) .
• Brief discussion with neighbour
• e.g. policy implications
• List of advantages / disadvantages
• Doing a calculation / completing a diagram
• Worksheets
• Hybrid between lecture and workshop
• Break
• Watch video
• Compare notes
• Tidy up your own notes
• Entertainment

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6. Building on the lecture

• Note takers
• Post on discussion board
• Use for seminars
• Post questions on discussion board
• Use it as FAQ
• Start debate going with students
• Directly link to seminars/workshops
• Material covered
• Activities in the lecture
• Online study guide your own or published
• Think of incentives for use
• Preparation for next lecture

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Active and Passive learning

• When students are constrained to the role of
  listeners while a lecturer delivers a monologue,
  they tend to be passive, not only at a
  behavioural level, but on a cognitive level as
  well
• They do not engage actively in the kinds of
  elaborative information processing that helps to
  ensure understanding, retention and transfer

Jessica Ball, Strategies for Promoting Active
Learning in Large Classes, Journal of teaching
Practice, vol 3, 1994
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Learning

• Learning is fundamentally about making and
  maintaining connections biologically through
  neural networks mentally among concepts, ideas
  and meanings and experientially through
  interaction between the mind and the environment,
  self and other, generality and context,
  deliberation and action.
• Learning is enhanced by taking place in the
  context of a compelling situation that balances
  challenges and opportunity, simulating the
  brains ability to conceptualize quickly and its
  capacity and need for contemplation and
  reflection upon experiences.

James Eison, Teaching Strategies for the
Twenty-first Century, 2002
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Less is more

• Comparing lectures in which 90 v 70 v 50 of
  the sentences disseminated new information (with
  the remaining time in case being used for
  restating, highlighting significance, giving more
  examples, and relating to the students prior
  experience) it was found that students given the
  lower level of new content learned and retained
  the lecture information better.

Russell, I.J. et al., 1984, Effects of lecture
information density on medical student
achievement, Journal of Medical Education 59
881-9
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Note taking

• Evidence suggests that for immediate recall of a
  lecture, students who take most notes themselves
  come out best and those who rely on tutor notes
  come out worst.
• In the medium term (a couple of weeks) those who
  listened, but took no notes, came out best.
• Longer term, and with the chance for revision,
  those who took no notes came out worst, and those
  how have tutor notes come out best.

Liz Barnett, LSE, 2003
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Audience response system