Active Learning
36 Practical Active Learning Ideas for Large Lecture Courses
Observe & Consider
In this week’s podcast, Steel Wagstaff from L&S Learning Support Services facilitates a conversation with Janet Batzli, the Associate Director of the Biocore program; David Baum, a professor of Botany; and David Zimmerman, a professor of English, about their experiences teaching large lecture and laboratory classes. In this conversation they share best practices, offer useful ideas and tips, and provide valuable insight into how they’ve introduced active learning and increase student involvement in larger courses.
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Observe & Consider
Common Problems with the Large Lecture
It’s probably no surprise to you that the large lecture has received heavy, sustained criticized as an instructional format. And yet, it has survived, like other unhelpful nuisances (Hello flat-earth theorists, Sunny Delight, the electoral college, and the mosquito!). You’ve all had (and hopefully shared) horror stories, seen examples of disengaged teaching, passive participation (or worse) from students, and felt the frustrations of trying to fit a round peg (effective, engaged pedagogy and meaningful learning) into a round hole (poorly designed spaces, overenrolled courses, and unprepared or disinterested students). Some of the biggest problems with large lectures are the following:
- the limits of student attention
- poor rates of retention & transfer
- encourages learner passivity or distraction
In the following sections, we’ll examine some specific, practical ideas that address these problems and have been demonstrated to improve learning outcomes in large lecture courses.
Problem #1: The Limits of Student Attention
Researchers studying the learning experiences of college students in standard lectures found that after an initial settling-in period of five minutes, students readily assimilated material for the next five minutes. Ten to 20 minutes into the lecture, however, confusion and boredom set in and assimilation fell off rapidly, remaining low until a brief spike just before the lecture’s end. These findings have been confirmed and verified in a number of subsequent studies. If we know that learning is uneven or even ineffectual when spread continuously in a 50 minute (or longer) lecture without breaks or variations, why continue doing it?
Solutions:
The most basic solution to this problem is to intentionally break the lecture every 15-20 minutes, inserting brief demonstrations or short writing and reflection exercises followed by class discussion. There are a number of formal strategies that take this basic approach, including the following:
- The Feedback Lecture: Initially developed at Oregon State University in the late 1970s, the feedback lecture is built around a supplemental study guide that provides assigned readings, pre- and posttests, learning objectives, and an outline of lecture notes. The basic format consists o