Green Decorative Wheat

Increase Interactivity in Lecturing

"Dedicated instructors have worked for years to teach large classes in a way that's active, engaging, and inclusive....Some of the criticisms of large classes are basically criticisms of uninterrupted lecturing. But it's possible to gather hundreds of students together and do something else." (Beckie Supiano, "Teaching a Sea of Students" 2023)

Although the cliché of the large lecture class may not be as true today as it once was, lecturing is still a popular teaching method, especially for large classes. Lecturing can be an efficient, effective, and satisfying way to impart information and challenge students to think and reflect on course content. Nevertheless, even lecture courses benefit from personalization and interactivity. So, how can that be done "at scale"?

A recent article, "Teaching: How to Personalize Data Projects in a Large Class", in Teaching, the weekly newsletter from the Chronicle of Higher Education, described an innovative research project that asked students in large classes to collect data on a prescribed topic, and the professor then "aggregate[d] the data and produce[d] reports so student could see how their findings compared with those of their classmates." While this sounds like a lot of work, the two professors involved were able to automate much of the work, allowing them to personalize this interaction without much additional work.

But what if you are not in the position to program your system to do this type of analysis? The good news is that adding personalization and interactivity to your large class is fairly easy. The first step is to make an explicit goal to focus on interactivity, and the goal itself may change how the class unfolds. Here are some easy, "low hanging fruit" ideas for things to try:

  • Incorporate a "think, pair, share" activity. These activities take only a few minutes of synchronous class time, and can also be run in a fully online course if you get creative about how students perform the "share" step. In a large lecture class, you may choose to call on 5-8 groups to share a few sentences about their activity, and online, you might incorporate a digital whiteboard or use Flip (formerly "FlipGrid") for sharing.
  • Leverage the "Groups" tool in Blackboard to create small groups of students who can be assigned synchronous or asynchronous topics for discussion and deep-dives. In AY 2022-23, about 10% of all VLE courses used Blackboard groups in this way. If you would like to try, but you aren't sure how, reach out to OIR for help: OIR@wichita.edu
  • Try integrating Microsoft Teams with your Blackboard class and then use the many rich features in Teams to support interactivity and personalization. It's easy to integrate both Classic Blackboard and Blackboard Ultra classes, and once that's done, you can use Teams messaging, the "Reflect" tool (useful for polling about affective reactions to topics of your choice), and the Class Notebook for shared notes and a centralized place to ask and answer questions.
  • Try adding real-time polling to your class using Microsoft Forms (included in the 365 suite) or, if you have departmental funds to support the cost try PollEverywhere. Raj Logan, of the Biology Department, is using PollEverywhere with his General Biology I course, which is a VLE. He likes it because it allows him to "check the 'pulse' of the classroom" as well as to "clarify concepts again with a chalk talk when student responses suggest they are lacking a clear understanding of a concept from the PowerPoint." Other professors on campus have tried Microsoft Forms with a similar result.
  • Consider creating a shared digital area of some kind where students can ask questions and other students can answer them during your lectures (synchronous) or during the unit/module (asynchronous). While this area will need to be monitored for accuracy (something a GTA can do during synchronous sessions), it is a great way to build community and give students the opportunity to work with what they are learning as they work to answer other students' questions. Good tools for this would include a shared Microsoft Whiteboard (included in the 365 suite) space for in-person classes. For online classes, the same effect can be achieved using a Blackboard discussion board dedicated to questions or a dedicated Flip
  • Encourage questions during synchronous lectures by asking the student's name, repeating the question to the whole class, and then speaking directly to the student when answering the question.