Engaging Students with a Conscientious and Inclusive Lecture
This guest post is by Celine Greene, Senior Digital Teaching and Learning Strategist at the Center for Teaching and Learning.
It's beyond time to retire the conventional, didactic, "old school" lecture—the one where the teacher is the sage on the stage and the students are passive listeners expected to learn the content by absorbing it. This method simply doesn't work for everyone.
Let’s reconsider and reimagine the traditional lecture so that it meets the needs of more learners. This happens when faculty develop a lecture as an active learning experience: that is, one in which the students are participants, not just recipients, in their learning. Creating a well-organized, purposeful, conscientious, and inclusive lecture will engage more students and thus become a more successful pedagogical approach.
Students as Participants
How does a student become a participant in the lecture? By being engaged.
Engaged learners invest in their scholarship on a psychological level, and they attempt to meet or exceed the “knowledge, skills or crafts that [their] academic work is intended to promote” (Lamborn et al., 1992). In short, faculty should encourage students to actively concentrate, comprehend, reflect, and build connections that reach beyond the discipline to include their authentic, lived experiences.
Building the Lecture to be an Active Learning Experience
Faculty can carefully craft an engaging lecture by reaching and connecting with all learners while still maintaining the learning outcomes at the core. This starts by making the lecture universal in its design: that is, considering known and unknown variables in the environments, resources, and biological, neurological, and physical abilities of students. Additionally, the inclusive lecture must recognize, honor, and respect individuals through purposeful decisions and actions. This way, students can see themselves and dismantle preconceived notions of “who belongs” in a discipline. This extends to language, scholarly references, and more. Furthermore, instructors should build lectures so that goals and objectives are evident to the students.
Beyond purposeful design, lecture delivery plays an important role when transforming it into an active learning experience. For example, speakers should keep distractions to a minimum by removing unnecessary details or tangents from the narrative. Reducing or avoiding novelties and triggers, such as loud noises or distressing images, is important. Minimizing environmental barriers is also critical. This includes physical barriers such as poor lighting, poor audio, and even impediments such as ill-considered seating plans in a physical classroom, or a picture-in-picture video that blocks on-screen text in a recorded video.
Lastly, whether delivering their lectures synchronously or asynchronously, speakers should strive for a clear and evenly paced presentation with plenty of planned breaks. Breaks allow for cognitive processing, translations (language or assistive technology), physical movement (shown to be positively associated with cognition, Braybrook, 2022); and corresponding interaction among faculty, students, and/or relevant resources such as comprehension checks or concept maps.
A Checklist for the Engaging Lecture
- Is my lecture digitally accessible?
- Is my lecture inclusive?
- Does its cited scholarship and chosen imagery represent historically marginalized and under-represented groups?
- Have I removed personal bias?
- Have I explained or removed idioms, jargon, pop culture, ethnocentric, ageist, or other potentially harmful references?
- Are my lecture’s objectives salient in its text and narrative?
- Is my lecture free from distractions?
- Is my lecture’s content curated to remain pertinent to the goals?
- Are any novelties kept to a minimum?
- Are all potential microaggressions removed?
- Is the physical environment where I deliver my lecture appropriate for all learners?
- Is the lighting sufficient?
- Are external noises kept to a minimum?
- In a face-to-face setting, is there a direct line-of-sight between myself and my students? In a virtual setting, am I on camera where my face can be clearly seen (including lips being read)?
- Am I speaking clearly and evenly paced?
- Is there a microphone, and if so, am I using it?
- Am I providing active learning breaks?
- Do I pause for students’ silent processing and reflection?
- Do I allow captioners or language translators, if they are present, to keep pace?
- Are there opportunities for students to question or engage in discussion with me or their peers?
- Can students stretch or otherwise move without disrupting their peers or the lecture’s delivery?
- Are students able (and encouraged!) to read through or catch up on their notes, or perhaps use other resources that reinforce what they’re learning?
Beyond Making our Lectures “Active”: Why Engagement Matters
As educators and subject matter experts, we are so often focused on our discipline-specific expertise and desired learning outcomes that we sometimes overlook our students. We forget about their learner variability; about life’s interruptions; and even about their motivations. We forget that while we are making an investment in them, they, too, are making an investment.
We can help see to it that their investment reaps rewards. “Engagement is positively related to a host of desired outcomes, including high grades, student satisfaction, and persistence…. By being engaged, students develop habits of the mind and heart that promise to stand them in good stead for a lifetime of continuous learning.” (Chen et al., 2008) Let’s make this happen by purposefully delivering an education, including lecture activities, where students are engaged and active participants who know that they belong and can succeed.
References:
Braybrook, Stephen (2022). Why and how to bring physical movement into the classroom. Times Higher Education. Retrieved November 6, 2023 from https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/why-and-how-bring-physical-movement-classroom.
Chen, P.S.D., Gonyea, R. & Kuh, G. (2008). Learning at a Distance: Engaged or Not?. Innovate: Journal of Online Education, 4(3). Retrieved March 22, 2022 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/104252/.
Lamborn, S., Newmann, F., & Wehlage, G. (1992). The significance and sources of student engagement. Student engagement and achievement in American secondary schools, 11-39.