This document discusses strategies for making lectures more engaging. It notes that while lectures are often criticized as boring, they remain important for conveying large amounts of complex information. The document explores why lectures persist in universities and provides seven strategies for vivifying lectures, such as starting with questions to pique student interest, connecting to prior knowledge, breaking up lectures with varied activities, using multimedia, and having students reflect on what they learned. Overall, it argues that lectures can be improved by making them more interactive, relatable and inspiring for students.

1. It’s OK to lecture:
from boredom to brilliance
Tansy Jessop
CPD Workshops
@solentlearning
9 November 2016

2. Today’s session
1) Lectures: a fading or failed pedagogy
2) The problem with lectures
3) Why lectures still have currency
4) Strategies to vivify lectures
5) Life by Power Point: ideas and options

3. Which one species is most
endangered?
a) The Black Rhino
b) Leatherback turtle
c) University lecture
d) Orangutan
e) Bengal Tiger
f) African wild dog

4. Despite the increased emphasis in recent years on
improving professors’ teaching skills, such training often
focuses on incorporating technology or flipping the
classroom, rather than on how to give a traditional college
lecture. It’s also in part why the lecture—a mainstay of any
introductory undergraduate course—is endangered.
(Gross-Loh 2016)

5. So are lectures dead?

6. For some, it appears so….

7. What’s the problem with lecturing?
(Mann & Robinson 2009)
2
39
29
30
Boredom in lectures
Bored most of the time
Bored half of the time
Bored some of the time

8. Meta-analysis 225 studies looking at the effectiveness of
traditional lectures versus active learning in undergraduate
STEM courses. Lecturing increased failure rates by 55 percent;
active learning resulted in better grades and a 36 percent drop
in class failure rates.
(Gross-Loh 2016)

9. How does it compare with other
teaching formats?
(Mann and Robinson 2009, 250)
Higher boredom ratings
Lower boredom ratings

10. But is it the lecture itself that’s the
problem—or the lecturer?
Trivium:
Grammar,
Logic,
Rhetoric.

11. What has cool-headed science done to
oratory?
Oratory, like writing, emphasises the ability to
formulate coherent thoughts into compelling and
well-crafted arguments. The decline of both in
academic settings comes from their diminished
stature and training opportunities.
(Gross-Loh 2016)

12. So, why do we persist with lectures in
modern universities? (top three)
a) Financial efficiency
b) Convenience
c) Lectures have capacity to inspire
d) Persistence of tradition
e) Didactic view of teaching
f) To convey large bodies of complex information
g) Lectures underline research and expertise of
academics
h) Less time-consuming than active learning

13. • Think of your favourite lecturer ever
• What made those lectures inspiring?
• Turn to your neighbour and tell them what inspired
you.
• Add words which capture what about your favourite
inspired you:
www.menti.com 78 78 44
Moving from boredom to brilliance

14. Is good lecturing about charisma and
performance?

15. Seven strategies to vivify lecturing
1) Start with why; reveal your genuine questions
2) Connect with students prior learning and experience
3) Break it up into a small number of parts, and break it
up into pairs and triads
4) Make your teaching presence felt: teaching is
relational
5) Learning is a sensory experience. Tell stories, pictures,
metaphors, artefacts, poems, short media clips.
6) Use lively, fresh, contemporary research material
7) Use CATS

16. Start with why, start with
questions (S1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sioZd3AxmnE

17. Connect with prior experience and
knowledge (S2)
Student learning is deepest
when the content or skills
being learned are personally
meaningful

18. Break it up! (S3)
• 15-20 minutes of
continuous activity
before a learner’s
attention starts to
wane
• You can build
muscles
• Surprising break ups

19. Build your relationship with students
(S4)
• Not only about techniques and
skills
• Not a technocratic business; it’s
a people business
“Emotion has only recently gotten
a foothold inside the academy,
and we still don’t know whether
to give it a seminar room, a
lecture hall, or just a closet we
can air out now and then (Behar,
1996).

20. Use story, artefact, poems, media clips
(S5)

21. “Research promotes critical and
creative thinking, the habits of
mind that nurture innovation;
creates a sense of intellectual
excitement and adventure, and
provides the satisfaction of real
accomplishment”.
(Ellis, 2006)

22. Use CATS (S7)
1. What is the most important thing I
learnt from this lecture?
2. What still puzzles me?

23. Using power-point well
1) Few slides or many?
2) It’s not an aide memoire
3) It’s a visual medium (snipping tool)
4) Transitions between slides
5) Remember that students can’t read & listen at the
same time
6) Let them read the words!
7) Tell a story through the headings

25. References
Behar, R. (1996) The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology that breaks your heart.
Boston. Beacon Press.
Brew, A. 1999. Research and teaching: Changing relationships in a changing context,
Studies in Higher Education, 24:3, 291-301.
Gross-Loh, C. 2016. Should Colleges Really eliminate the College Lecture? The
Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/07/eliminating-the-
lecture/491135/
Harland, T. 2012. University Teaching: An Introductory Guide. Abingdon. Routledge.
James, A. and Brookfield, S. 2014. Engaging Imagination: Helping Students Become
Creative and Reflective Thinkers. San Francisco. Jossey Bass.
Mann, S. & Robinson, A. 2009. Boredom in the lecture theatre: an investigation into
the contributors, moderators and outcomes of boredom amongst university
students, British Educational Research Journal, 35:2, 243-258