Would you like to make your lectures more interactive? Consider creating a variety of activities to engage your students during your lecture. Activities not only involve the students in the material, they can also promote critical thinking, develop skills, and allow for informal assessment of student understanding.
You can make your lectures more interactive by including techniques such as think-pair-share, demonstrations, and role playing. These techniques can foster active engagement and enhance the value of your lecture.
Think-Pair-Share – Activities pose a question to students that they must consider alone and then discuss with a neighbor before settling on a final answer. This is a great way to motivate students and promote higher-level thinking.
One – Minute Writing – Ask students to stop what they are doing a produce a written response in only one minute. This technique can be used to collect feedback on understanding by asking them to identify what they thought the most confusing point was or to voice a question. It can also allow students an opportunity for immediate application.
Question of the Day – Activities for the beginning of class that engage students with the lecture material in a short project that requires students to think actively about the content. The instructors poses a question that is generally not multiple-choice but rather requires short explanations, annotations, calculations, or drawings that develop communication skills as well as higher-level thinking.
For more information, visit the pages created by:
Heather Macdonald College of William and Mary and Rebecca Teed, SERC and updated by Gail Hoyt, University of Kentucky, Jennifer Imazeki, San Diego State University, Barbara Millis University of Texas, San Antonio, and Jose Vazquez-Cognet University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.