Lecturing Best Practices

[Caracal]

I wonder how much of this thread is really people talking past each other because they mean different things by "lecture"? To me, anything participatory or collaborative is by definition not a lecture -- if students are expected to speak, it's a discussion, and if they are doing stuff, it's an activity, and both of those are distinct from lecturing.

If the main thing that is happening is me talking and going through material, then that's a lecture as far as I'm concerned. It isn't exclusive of anything else. If a discussion breaks out in the middle of my lecture, that's a great outcome. Sometimes, I lecture for part of the class and then have students do something in small groups, or have a planned discussion of a reading.

As for the other question, yes, I had professors who just lectured. Most of them liked questions and were willing to go off topic to answer them, but their basic model was that they talked and we listened. The two I can think of were both great at it. I mix things up more than that, but, especially in my lower level classes, I do a lot of lecturing.

I also just don't agree that even a lecture without much class participation is the same as watching a video. There's a different level of engagement with someone in the room. We can complain about phones in the classroom but I guarantee you that students watching a lecture on their computer are going to be more prone to distractions. Even if a professor isn't directly soliciting feedback, noticing how students react to, and engage with, the material is important. Even if students do seem bored and disengaged, I need to know that. I also just don't think most of us can translate very well into a video format. We aren't actors, we don't know how to speak to a camera. I'm pretty sure that if I had to tape lectures it would either be me weirdly wandering around and floating off camera, or me forcing myself to stare creepily at the camera and talking in a weird monotone.

[downer]

Some people prefer lectures. I know I thought that most of my undergraduate lectures were a waste of time and if I were the student I'd prefer to read or watch video. But students are not rushing to do that.

[Caracal]

Especially in graduate courses, where cutting edge research means that the most up-to-date info is not widely disseminated, this makes sense. But when the information is well-established, and available in all kinds of print and online resources, it's much less obvious what value there is in one person standing in a room with other people and delivering the same information in the same manner as could be done without them being face-to-face.

The question is not whether the information is "available" in various places. Nobody actually needs to take a class to learn about anything. The question is how you can structure a class so that students can get the most out of it. So, there can be all kinds of reasons why lecturing on something might be better.

A professor might prefer to lecture so students can get broader context quickly and then read stuff outside of class that looks at things more in depth or from particular perspectives. They might find that they can explain something in class in ways that helps students to understand the material more fully than reading something. There's nothing wrong with flipped classroom models, but there's nothing wrong with lecturing either and it all varies by discipline and teaching style.

[marshwiggle]

A professor might prefer to lecture so students can get broader context quickly and then read stuff outside of class that looks at things more in depth or from particular perspectives. They might find that they can explain something in class in ways that helps students to understand the material more fully than reading something. There's nothing wrong with flipped classroom models, but there's nothing wrong with lecturing either and it all varies by discipline and teaching style.

So here's another question I will pose to people:

If a lecture benefits from the -face-to-face model even if there is no explicit interaction, is a lecture with 500 students any "worse" than a lecture with 50 students?

[Caracal]

So here's another question I will pose to people:

If a lecture benefits from the -face-to-face model even if there is no explicit interaction, is a lecture with 500 students any "worse" than a lecture with 50 students?

If the professor really just comes in every day and talks? Probably not. And there are people who can legitimately pull that off, but you have to be a really gifted charismatic presence to make that happen. More commonly, I think you have classes where a professor has to just lecture because they have 100+ students and it isn't really practical to do much else, but in a smaller class the same professor would probably make things more interactive and it would be a better class as a result.

[Aster]

A professor might prefer to lecture so students can get broader context quickly and then read stuff outside of class that looks at things more in depth or from particular perspectives. They might find that they can explain something in class in ways that helps students to understand the material more fully than reading something. There's nothing wrong with flipped classroom models, but there's nothing wrong with lecturing either and it all varies by discipline and teaching style.

So here's another question I will pose to people:

If a lecture benefits from the -face-to-face model even if there is no explicit interaction, is a lecture with 500 students any "worse" than a lecture with 50 students?

Yes. With a 500-student model, you have a "sea of anonymity" phenomenon strongly exhibited. That is, it is far easier for students to find ways to distract themselves away from classroom learning. By becoming part of a crowd, they can disappear from observation (or feeling as if they are being observed). This allows them a greater sense of personal freedom to behave badly without consequences.

Come in late? Probably you won't even be noticed.
Leave early? Ditto.
Fail to even come to class? Ditto.
Watch netflix with your earbuds. Ditto.
Fall asleep? Ditto.
Sit on instagram? Ditto.
Randomly play with phone? Ditto.
Do homework for another class? Ditto.
Groin text? Heck, you dont' even need to hide your phone in a giant classroom. You can park it right on your desk and goof away.

This is very much how much of social media operates. With a heightened environment of detachment and anonymity (or even the perception of anonymity), there is a corresponding loss of responsibility and accountability.

Whereas in a small-medium classroom, students who are disengaged/distracted are far more likely to feel like they're standing out by burying themselves in their smartphone apps, listening to music, sleeping, playing video games, etc...

Simply put, large classrooms are much worse breeding grounds for bad student learning behaviors than are small to medium size classrooms. If you are a poorly selective or non-selective institution, amphitheater classrooms are not things that you want to be building. We teach to the students that we have. An appropriate physical classroom environment is a key component to that. Big classrooms nominally function for a bygone era of college students that were well prepared and well motivated to personally succeed. While those cohorts do still dominate at most R1's and selective SLAC's, the same cannot be said today for many R2's and even less selective institutions.

This is one of the reasons why community colleges in nearly all U.S. states do not even build classrooms that can fit more than 40 students in them.

I have taught nearly identical courses in large amphitheater, medium classrooms and small classrooms. The differences in student personal accountability are significant. On average, there is a direct correlation to positive student responsibility in class with decreasing classroom size. I will never again teach in a large classroom if I have a choice in the matter.

[marshwiggle]

This is very much how much of social media operates. With a heightened environment of detachment and anonymity (or even the perception of anonymity), there is a corresponding loss of responsibility and accountability.

Whereas in a small-medium classroom, students who are disengaged/distracted are far more likely to feel like they're standing out by burying themselves in their smartphone apps, listening to music, sleeping, playing video games, etc...

Do you know of any research to document this?

[Aster]

This is very much how much of social media operates. With a heightened environment of detachment and anonymity (or even the perception of anonymity), there is a corresponding loss of responsibility and accountability.

Whereas in a small-medium classroom, students who are disengaged/distracted are far more likely to feel like they're standing out by burying themselves in their smartphone apps, listening to music, sleeping, playing video games, etc...

Do you know of any research to document this?

The anonymity thing (as it pertains to social media encouraging bad personal behaviors) has been discussed extensively in the regular media ever since internet chat rooms came into widespread usage. Indeed, when I run a targeted internet search on Google Scholar I get back so many hits that I could get lost in the reading for hours.

But educational studies on the effectiveness of different classroom sizes is much sparser. Most who even indirectly monitor this are on the fence that reliable quantitative studies exist for classroom size studies, or that the studies that do exist exhibit any strong patterns.

And yet, the anecdotal evidence by practitioners is overwhelming. For *whatever* reason, professors greatly prefer teaching in small classrooms over large ones. When students are polled they say the same thing.

But I had 15 minutes to do some new searches this afternoon, and came across this peach from 2010 that I had not seen before.
"Lost in a Crowd: Anonymity and Incivility in the Accounting Classroom", by Elder, Sweaton and Swinney.
http://aejournal.com/ojs/index.php/aej/article/view/153/93

"...we present statistically significant evidence that incivility is indeed higher in large accounting classrooms than
in small accounting classrooms. As hypothesized, the results of our analysis indicate that the level of incivility is
higher in the anonymous setting of the large classroom. Our quantitative results support descriptive accounts in the
literature that linked incivility and the large classroom (Harris, 2006; Indiana University, 2000; Sorcinelli, 1994).
Our results do not support the findings of Meyers et al. (2006) who reported that class conflict was not related to
class size. The average class size reported by their respondents, however, was only thirty-seven students."

And they this have this beautiful table listing examples of "Irresponsible student behaviors" that they examined. I'm keeping this list for reference, ha ha.

Irresponsible Student Behaviors
f. Sleeping in class
g. Not paying attention in class
h. Not taking notes during class
i. Conversation distracting other students
j. Conversation distracting you
k. Reluctance to answer direct questions
l. Using a computer in class for purposes not related to the class
m. Cell phone or pager disruptions during class
n. Arriving late for class
o. Coming and going during class
p. Leaving early from class
q. Cutting class
r. Being unprepared for class
s. Creating tension by dominating discussion
t. Cheating on exams or quizzes
u. Demanding make-up exams, extensions, grade changes, or special favors
v. Taunting or belittling other students
w. Challenging your knowledge or credibility in class?

[marshwiggle]

This is very much how much of social media operates. With a heightened environment of detachment and anonymity (or even the perception of anonymity), there is a corresponding loss of responsibility and accountability.

Whereas in a small-medium classroom, students who are disengaged/distracted are far more likely to feel like they're standing out by burying themselves in their smartphone apps, listening to music, sleeping, playing video games, etc...

Do you know of any research to document this?

The anonymity thing (as it pertains to social media encouraging bad personal behaviors) has been discussed extensively in the regular media ever since internet chat rooms came into widespread usage. Indeed, when I run a targeted internet search on Google Scholar I get back so many hits that I could get lost in the reading for hours.

But educational studies on the effectiveness of different classroom sizes is much sparser. Most who even indirectly monitor this are on the fence that reliable quantitative studies exist for classroom size studies, or that the studies that do exist exhibit any strong patterns.

And yet, the anecdotal evidence by practitioners is overwhelming. For *whatever* reason, professors greatly prefer teaching in small classrooms over large ones. When students are polled they say the same thing.

Sure, but they probably also prefer windows,  desks or tables (rather than the chair with side-desk things), and so on. If there were any evidence it significantly affects student performance you'd expect there'd be lots of published stuff about it.

But I had 15 minutes to do some new searches this afternoon, and came across this peach from 2010 that I had not seen before.
"Lost in a Crowd: Anonymity and Incivility in the Accounting Classroom", by Elder, Sweaton and Swinney.
http://aejournal.com/ojs/index.php/aej/article/view/153/93

"...we present statistically significant evidence that incivility is indeed higher in large accounting classrooms than
in small accounting classrooms. As hypothesized, the results of our analysis indicate that the level of incivility is
higher in the anonymous setting of the large classroom. Our quantitative results support descriptive accounts in the
literature that linked incivility and the large classroom (Harris, 2006; Indiana University, 2000; Sorcinelli, 1994).
Our results do not support the findings of Meyers et al. (2006) who reported that class conflict was not related to
class size. The average class size reported by their respondents, however, was only thirty-seven students."

And they this have this beautiful table listing examples of "Irresponsible student behaviors" that they examined. I'm keeping this list for reference, ha ha.

Irresponsible Student Behaviors
f. Sleeping in class
g. Not paying attention in class
h. Not taking notes during class
i. Conversation distracting other students
j. Conversation distracting you
k. Reluctance to answer direct questions
l. Using a computer in class for purposes not related to the class
m. Cell phone or pager disruptions during class
n. Arriving late for class
o. Coming and going during class
p. Leaving early from class
q. Cutting class
r. Being unprepared for class
s. Creating tension by dominating discussion
t. Cheating on exams or quizzes
u. Demanding make-up exams, extensions, grade changes, or special favors
v. Taunting or belittling other students
w. Challenging your knowledge or credibility in class?

That's something, but again, one would expect to see some result in terms of final grades if the lecture experience is intimately tied to student learning.

[Aster]

Sure, but they probably also prefer windows,  desks or tables (rather than the chair with side-desk things), and so on. If there were any evidence it significantly affects student performance you'd expect there'd be lots of published stuff about it.

This makes interesting assumptions about education research. Like how much there really is in Higher Education. It's not nearly as much as people think there is. Or how useful the results of these studies are. Most studies do not show clear patterns to anything. And the ones that do are commonly argued to suffer high researcher bias. There are reasons for this. Educational research in Higher Educations is difficult to do. It is very difficult to set up with decent sample sizes. There are very limited choices for what can even be measured. Your typical education study in Higher Education will be one professor comparing one course section to another course section, with n's of less than 100. A less common education study may include 2-5 professors and scale up to maybe several course sections in a single academic term, with n's under 500. And in nearly all cases, the research will be confined to a single course type, at a single college, and not repeated. And if people do publish, it usually ends up in very obscure, 4th tier journals that nobody has ever heard about.

That's something, but again, one would expect to see some result in terms of final grades if the lecture experience is intimately tied to student learning.

This also makes interesting assumptions about education research. What little there is pertaining specifically to Higher Education, is mostly evaluated to student and faculty polling responses. There is a minority of research utilizing "hard numbers" like assessment scores. And even in the latter cases, the natural range of student scores is often very high even before a researcher starts to even fiddle around with independent variables.

Educational research is mostly a social science, and expecting for clear, significant patterns of statistical significance is going to routinely disappoint. The disdain that so many professional researchers in other disciplines have for educational research is directly tied to educational professors being notoriously known for making (or clinging to) wild, poorly tested, or even long-debunked assumptions about learning. But then when those non-education professors cut the education professors out of the loop and "run the experiment right", results tend to be very disappointing. There aren't conclusive results. There aren't significant results. It's a real downer.

And this is why we still overwhelmingly rely on our individual experiences, the experiences of our colleagues, and our professional training to guide our pedagogies. The science of learning itself is messy, confusing, contradictory, and not at all agreed upon. If one is really interested in self-improvement as an educator, my recommendation is to learn best by gleaning through the massed anecdotal accounts of many, many professors. One of the top places to get those accounts is on the old CHE forums, here on the new forums, or from the comments sections from Inside Higher Ed.

[marshwiggle]

Educational research is mostly a social science, and expecting for clear, significant patterns of statistical significance is going to routinely disappoint. The disdain that so many professional researchers in other disciplines have for educational research is directly tied to educational professors being notoriously known for making (or clinging to) wild, poorly tested, or even long-debunked assumptions about learning. But then when those non-education professors cut the education professors out of the loop and "run the experiment right", results tend to be very disappointing. There aren't conclusive results. There aren't significant results. It's a real downer.

In this regard, class sizes seems like "learning styles". Since people clearly have obvious preferences, it seems intuitively that there should be some measurable correlation with outcomes. (Although I recently heard of research showing that students felt better in a traditional lecture than they did in an active learning setting, even though their test results were higher in the latter case. The obvious conclusion is that learning requires effort, and so when it's more "effortless" there's less actual learning. Maybe something similar is happening with class size; the more comfortable settings make it seem like there's more learning happening. Maybe that's the paradox of "learning styles".)

Isolating variables is certainly difficult, but does it matter that much? Specifically, if some sort of highly controlled experiment showed a difference of 5% in learning between one setting and another, that would be barely detectable in the real world. Something like exam format would have a massively bigger effect.

[Caracal]

Isolating variables is certainly difficult, but does it matter that much? Specifically, if some sort of highly controlled experiment showed a difference of 5% in learning between one setting and another, that would be barely detectable in the real world. Something like exam format would have a massively bigger effect.

I basically agree with this in a narrow sense. Internal, not external factors mostly determine how well students do in a class and how much they learn in it. Talent and work ethic in some combination are obviously going to matter a lot more than the size of the class, or what particular style of teaching is used for the majority of students. I wouldn't say that means these things don't matter, because small differences add up.

I also don't think that objective measures of how much students learn in a class are the end all and be all of education. It also matters whether students can see the relevance of the material, continue to apply it in future classes and incorporate it into their larger base of understanding and knowledge.  This is where teaching styles, competence of the instructor, and settings that allow for accountability and interaction really do matter. Just because these things aren't easy to measure doesn't mean they don't exist or that they aren't important.

[ergative]

Although I recently heard of research showing that students felt better in a traditional lecture than they did in an active learning setting, even though their test results were higher in the latter case. The obvious conclusion is that learning requires effort, and so when it's more "effortless" there's less actual learning.

I'd be interested in seeing some of this research. I was in a calligraphy workshop some months ago, taught by an undisputed, world-renowned expert in this particular script. But he was a terrible teacher, and spent all his time showing extremely advanced technique on a visualizer at the front of the classroom, rather than having us practice the actual script and giving us personalized feedback. I commented to someone else in the class about how disappointed I was that I was getting nothing that I couldn't see on youtube (except youtube gives better image quality and the ability to slow down and replay things), and she vehemently disagreed. She said that she would be too nervous to practice or show him her actual work, and she preferred just watching him while sitting quietly in her seat. I'm still bemused by this exchange, and by the way this classmate couldn't see how god-awful a teacher he was--especially since we'd both been at a similar workshop the previous summer taught be someone who was head and shoulders and knees and ankles above him in teaching abilities. She would honestly have preferred to pay hundreds of dollars to watch him show off than to get actual instruction.

[marshwiggle]

Although I recently heard of research showing that students felt better in a traditional lecture than they did in an active learning setting, even though their test results were higher in the latter case. The obvious conclusion is that learning requires effort, and so when it's more "effortless" there's less actual learning.

I'd be interested in seeing some of this research.

Here's the article:  Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom
From the abstract:

Comparing passive lectures with active learning using a randomized experimental approach and identical course materials, we find that students in the active classroom learn more, but they feel like they learn less. We show that this negative correlation is caused in part by the increased cognitive effort required during active learning.

I was in a calligraphy workshop some months ago, taught by an undisputed, world-renowned expert in this particular script. But he was a terrible teacher, and spent all his time showing extremely advanced technique on a visualizer at the front of the classroom, rather than having us practice the actual script and giving us personalized feedback. I commented to someone else in the class about how disappointed I was that I was getting nothing that I couldn't see on youtube (except youtube gives better image quality and the ability to slow down and replay things), and she vehemently disagreed. She said that she would be too nervous to practice or show him her actual work, and she preferred just watching him while sitting quietly in her seat. I'm still bemused by this exchange, and by the way this classmate couldn't see how god-awful a teacher he was--especially since we'd both been at a similar workshop the previous summer taught be someone who was head and shoulders and knees and ankles above him in teaching abilities. She would honestly have preferred to pay hundreds of dollars to watch him show off than to get actual instruction.

I think we like to see someone "make something look easy" since we can tell ourselves we could do it too. Ironically, the very fact that it looks easy reflects how skilled they are and so we're not going to come close.

[phattangent]

Here's the article:  Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom

Thanks for sharing this! A colleague and I are currently conducting a similar study and the results presented in that paper support some of our suspicions. In particular, the following quote from the paper felt really close to home:

In our study, students in the actively taught groups had to struggle with their peers through difficult physics problems that they initially did not know how to solve. The cognitive effort involved in this type of instruction may make students frustrated and painfully aware of their lack of understanding, in contrast with fluent lectures that may serve to confirm students' inaccurately inflated perceptions of their own abilities. (Deslauriers et al. 2019)