Teaching for Learning

101 Intentionally Designed Educational Activities to Put Students on the Path to Success

Claire Howell Major, Michael S. Harris, Todd D. Zakrajsek

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367469368
• eBook ISBN: 9781000402889
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Teaching for Learning is a comprehensive, practical resource for instructors that highlights and synthesizes proven teaching methods and active learning strategies. Each of the 101 entries describes an approach and lists its essential features and elements, demonstrates how the approach may be used in various educational contexts, reviews findings from the research literature, and describes techniques to improve effectiveness. Fully revised and updated to reflect the latest research and innovations in the field, this second edition also features critical new content on adapting techniques for use in online courses.

1 The Lecture Method

DOI: 10.4324/9781003038290-1

Description

The word “lecture” comes from the Latin lectare, which means “to read aloud.” Originally, lectures were designed as a method to transfer knowledge from experts to those who needed the information. Dating back at least to ancient Greeks and grounded within the art of rhetoric advocated by Aristotle around the fourth century bc (Brown & Atkins, 1988), lectures were the primary method by which knowledge and information were transmitted. Around the sixth century ad, scholars began to travel hundreds of miles to European monasteries to hear monks read a book aloud from a lectern. As the monk read, scholars would record the book’s contents verbatim (Exley & Dennick, 2009). This model, relying on oral recitation and grounded in religious traditions, became the foundation for teaching in the first universities and was used as early as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Whether a speaker stood in front of a lectern in a classroom or a pulpit in a church, the method of information delivery was essentially the same. As colonial universities developed in America, their tutors also relied upon lecture—and students’ recitation of received information back to the instructor—as the primary mode of instruction (Thelin, 2011). Professors’ reliance on the lecture has endured in higher education, leading some recent scholarship to note, not altogether positively, a “continued tradition of teaching undergraduates via straight lecture” (Grunspan, Kline, & Brownell, 2018, p. 5).

Although today’s lectures do not typically involve reading from a text, this teaching approach is a form of direct instruction whereby a knowledgeable individual delivers oral information and ideas about a particular subject to a group of individuals who seek information. Lectures often consist of “chalk-and-talk” (Young, Robinson, & Alberts, 2009) methods, in which a teacher “resides in front of a class, talks, and shows slides while students listen and take notes” (Schmidt, Wagener, Smeets, Keemink, & van der Molen, 2015, p. 12). The speaker-instructor serves as the conveyor of information to a student audience. In turn, students are expected to listen to the lecture and to learn the information being transferred. The information is typically a synthesis of the professor’s own reading, research, and experience in a given content area. Students may or may not be expected to take notes and ask questions. As Davis suggests:

Lecturing is not simply a matter of standing in front of a class and reciting what you know. The classroom lecture is a special form of communication in which voice, gesture, movement, facial expression, and eye contact can either complement or detract from the content.

(Davis, 2009, p. 148)

Although hard data on the prevalence of lecturing is scarce, countless researchers attest to its ubiquity throughout higher education (Exley & Dennick, 2009; Friesen, 2011; Hrepic, Zollman, & Rebello, 2007). Neumann (2001) noted that lecture is most prevalent within the humanities. Dennick (2004) notes the lecture is “the cornerstone of many undergraduate courses and is believed by many academics to be the only way their subjects can be taught to an increasing number of students” (p. 1). As this research suggests, lecturing is often the default method of college teaching (Biggs, 1996).

Purposes of the Lecture Method

The lecture’s primary purpose is to directly transfer information from an expert instructor to a group of student novices; as such, lectures provide “coverage, understanding, and motivation” to students (Atkins & Brown, 2002). The lecture is well suited for helping students acquire factual knowledge and developing their conceptual understandings about such knowledge (Exley & Dennick, 2009). Scholars pushing back on recent shifts away from lecture and toward 100 % student-centered (i.e., non-lecture) learning note that the hard sciences, in particular, benefit from lecturing, as “no faculty member can ‘guide’ an ordinary student into familiarity with the periodic table” but must instead teach them this concept directly (Burgan, 2006, p. 4). In this capacity, then, lectures can help students to quickly understand core facts, issues, and structures of a discipline or field and clarify key concepts, principles, and ideas (Svinicki & McKeachie, 2013).

In addition to providing facts, lectures can also provide other types of information. For example, instructors may lecture on their original research prior to its publication, as there is always some gap between when scholarship takes place and when it appears in a textbook (Cashin, 1985; Svinicki & McKeachie, 2013), and testing ideas in front of an audience can improve the quality of research output. For instructors not conducting original research, lectures can instead synthesize their personal experiences and insights with current events and course content to provide unique information to aid students in connecting to course topics and inspire them to learn (Burgan, 2006; Friesen, 2011; Hooper, 2008). For all instructors, lectures provide an opportunity to convey enthusiasm for course topics.

Lectures, as one of the most common forms of direct instruction, are also uniquely suited to synthesize and organization information coherently for student consumption. With lectures, instructors can summarize material scattered over a variety of sources or tailor course content to the interests and experiences of a particular group of students (Svinicki & McKeachie, 2013). Lectures can organize subject matter for course objectives and demonstrate and model scholarly thinking, critical analysis, and problem solving (Burgan, 2006). Lectures can also be used to provide basic factual information and demonstrate a higher level of application and problem solving (Exley & Dennick, 2009). One final purpose of the lecture is to explain information that would be dangerous to learn in any other way. Chemistry labs where mixtures of the wrong chemicals will cause an explosion, electrical engineering courses where touching given wires together will cause a fire or death by electrocution, and any other number of situations where a learner would be harmed may be best served by the direct instruction method of the lecture.

Types of Lecture

Several authors describe different types of lecture (Kaur, 2011; Woodring & Woodring, 2011). Across these classifications, lectures may be categorized in terms of the level of student interaction, in terms of content delivery, or in terms of the medium by which information is disseminated.

Categorization by Level of Student Interaction

• Formal lecture. The instructor delivers a well-organized, tightly constructed, and highly polished presentation. This type of lecture works well for teaching large groups of students and is commonly seen in popular TED Talks (Donovan, 2013) and other online platforms such as Khan Academy and massive open online courses (MOOCs) offered through Coursera, EdX, or Udacity. In the formal lecture, only the lecturer speaks; and if questions are accepted, they are held until after the lecture has concluded.
• Socratic lecture. The instructor, typically following a reading assignment that has provided students with a baseline of knowledge, proposes a series of carefully sequenced questions to one single student. The student uses pre-existing knowledge, logic, and inference skills to discuss the questions with the instructor as the rest of the class observes. This type of lecture works particularly well to model thinking in the discipline being taught.
• Semi-formal lecture. As in the formal lecture, the instructor delivers a prepared presentation. However, unlike its more formal counterpart, the semi-formal lecture is less elaborate in form and production. Occasionally, the lecturer entertains student questions during the presentation of material. Because it is less structured and polished than a formal lecture, the semi-formal lecture is the most common type of lecture.
• Lecture-discussion. The instructor encourages student participation throughout the lecture. The instructor presents and frequently stops to pose questions to students or request that students read and respond to provided materials. In a lecture-discussion, interaction can take a variety of forms: (1) instructor to class, (2) instructor to individual student, or (3) individual student to instructor.
• Interactive lecture. The instructor utilizes multiple “mini-lectures,” typically no longer than 20 minutes in length, and engages students in brief content-related activities in between presentations. Interaction may occur between instructor and students or among students.

Categorization by Content

• Expository lecture/oral essay. The instructor begins with a primary thesis or assertion and then proceeds to justify it, typically beginning with the most important information or supporting examples and proceeding to less important information in an ordered sequence.
• Storytelling lecture. The instructor tells specific stories that illustrate designed course concepts. The lecture proceeds in typical narrative form with an exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Characters are developed through the presentation of the storyline. The instructor endeavors to present critical content in a story that students will remember.
• Point-by-point lecture. The instructor presents information about a single concept, question, or issue. The lecture is typically organized by a hierarchical outline with major and minor points.
• Lecture-demonstration. The instructor demonstrates a process or activity. The lecture typically proceeds in chronological order, with the demonstration presented in a sequence of events that the lecturer highlights and explains.
• Problem-solving lecture. The lecturer outlines a main problem, its knowns and its unknowns. During the lecture, the instructor typically works through the problem and demonstrates a solution or various possible solutions.

Categorization by Medium

• Naked lecture. The instructor talks directly to students without the aid of technology (e.g., PowerPoint slides or projected images and notes), or uses technology outside of the classroom and reserves in-class time to communicate directly with students. Popularized by José Bowen (2012), the concept of “teaching naked” proposes that teachers can benefit by taking technology out of the classroom and there are specific techniques to use in this format to improve student learning (Bowen & Watson, 2017).
• Chalk and talk lecture. The instructor lectures while generating notes on a medium (chalk, in the early days of lecture) that students can see. While some teachers still use a blackboard, whiteboards, smartboards, light boards, and various educational technologies are common today.
• Multimedia lecture. Instructors use audio-visual tools, such as PowerPoint or Keynote, to highlight key points of text. A multimedia lecture (or “slide” lecture, as they used to be called), is one of the most commonly used approaches today. It is important for instructors to avoid “death-by-bullet point,” motion sickness through Prezi, or cramming too much text on slides, when creating visual aids.
• Video lecture. An instructor records a lecture for student consumption at another time. The recording may alternate between the i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Boxes
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. The Lecture Method
• 2. The Discussion Method
• 3. Reciprocal Peer Teaching
• 4. Academic Games
• 5. Reading Strategies
• 6. Writing to Learn
• 7. Graphic Organizers
• 8. Metacognitive Reflection
• 9. Conclusion
• Appendix
• Index