Making Lectures More Interactive

Traditional lecture is, once again, out of style. There’s evidence that lecture has been a multimedia, somewhat interactive process since the early modern period, and today, many instructors are again attempting to bring more active learning into the lecture hall. Instructors like Kelly Hogan at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are committed not simply to more active learning in lecture but also to more inclusive learning. Hogan uses guided reading questions and outlines with fill-in-the blanks for lecture and conducts real-time digital polling. Similarly, University of Alabama professor Claire Major uses three kinds of techniques -- which she calls bookends, overlays and interleaves -- to do what she calls interactive lecture.

What we think might allow these more interactive lectures to be even more effective is for lecturers to take advantage of the other professional teachers in the lecture hall: the teaching assistants.