OSU Department of Psychology instructor Anne Wilson typically found herself teaching in classrooms designed for didactic lecture. Then she had the opportunity to deliver her introductory psychology course in one of the university’s new active learning spaces.
That classroom, designed in much the same way as CVM’s new active learning classroom in VMAB, forced her to consider certain questions:
• Is active learning always better than lecturing?
• When should someone want or need to lecture?
• Is good lecturing better than bad lecturing?
• What makes a great lecture?
Great lectures, Wilson suggested during a Teaching Academy event on May 4, tell a story, use visual aids effectively and always consider the audience.
According to Wilson, storytelling in lectures makes the content more meaningful and memorable. The power of a story is evident when we consider our favorite childhood books and still remember their lessons decades later.
Faculty can define a unified meaning or message in a lecture and use their own stories or students’ stories to sequence content, promote discussion on or focus review of facts and concepts. Moreover, the stories behind academic studies — the Stanford Prison experiment, for example – “hook” a finding in the mind of the listener.
She also recommended including video and images in lectures to address the “Multimedia Principle”: People learn better from words and pictures than from words alone. At the same time, lecturers must concentrate on reducing cognitive load based on the “Coherence Principle,” which posits that people learn better when extraneous material is excluded.
(While students may clamor for fully loaded slides at CVM, putting all content on presentation slides doesn’t really do them much good from a learning perspective.)
Wilson also reviewed the “Signaling Principle,” which suggests learning is enhanced if instructors provide cues for how to process information. Small actions – like developing presentation slides with the assistance of an instructional designer – can accomplish this task by using tables, bolding key terms, or sequentially presenting data on graphs during an explanation so students’ attention is guided.
Ultimately, content that does not support or promote the central message of the lecture should be eliminated.
Assessing the students’ prior knowledge, laying a foundation of facts, and then making connections between new content and what the students already know also contributes to a deeper learning experience.
Wilson was just one of several engaging presenters at the University Center for the Advancement of Teaching’s annual conference. To review other resources, visit http://academy.osu.edu/annual-conference/session-materials/. The Office of Teaching & learning particularly recommends the slides from the keynote address.