Interactive Lecture

INTERACTIVE LECTURES

Strategy of training that is based on the theory that learners need to develop their own ideas from every different experience and learning material, as claimed by constructivism. The aim of the lecturer using this technique is to help the learners to make sense and reflect on their experiences, so that they can evaluate their own work and set their future goals. To make a lecture interactive learner should be engaged with the working material, so that segments of classic lecture should be combined with segments where learners are involved in many different short activities that can be individual, pair or small groups. ^[1]

Conducting an Interactive Lecture

Structure of the lecture

Since the basic concept of this strategy is to combine segment of classic lecture to segment of interactive activity that engage the learner, this technique can be used in many different ways. Interactive activities can be added occasionally to a classic lecture, or be repeated on a regular basis dividing the class in fragments.

If you want to incorporate interactive activities to your lecture on a regular basis you can use different structures for the lecture:

Start with a Question: After introducing the subject ask the students what they know and what they can deduce about it. For this exercise you can use various interactive techniques. This activity can be used at the beginning of every class period and can be added more often if desired.

Step and Repeat: In this type of structure a couple of activities are used repeatedly during one lecture time. At first the learners will move slowly because they will have to learn the technique, but after a while they will start being faster.

Book Ends: In this structure an interactive activity is used to open the session (i.e. question) and another one to close it (i.e. summary). Other activities can be used during the lecture to break it in short segments. This format allows to include different techniques associated to different purposes.

Facilitator’s Role

To stimulate the discussions ask open-ended questions that do not have a single correct answer. This kind of question can provoke thought and encourage learners’ participation.

During the discussion walk around and try to listen to some groups discussion to be sure they are on the right track.

Before and during the discussion ask the participants to take note of their own ideas and of the group’s findings during the exercise. If you need to grade the performance this report can be graded.

After the discussion find a standard way to gain the attention of the participants back (you can turn off and on the light or raise an arm or use any other signal that you have explained to them before).

To conclude ask randomly a few groups or all of them to report on their findings and discussions, so that the rest of the class is informed of the ideas discussed by the other groups.^[2]