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INTERACTIVE LECTURING

A Handbook for College Faculty

 

 

Elizabeth F. Barkley and Claire Howell Major

 

 

 

 

 

 

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We dedicate this book to Maryellen Weimer. She is a teacher-scholar who has been a great source of support and encouragement for us over the years and a generous advocate of all of our books in the College Teaching Techniques series. She also offered us sound advice and guidance that pushed our thinking during the development of this book.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are grateful to several individuals who supported the work of this project. We thank Shonteria Johnson for her assistance during the initial research phase. We also thank Carla Blakey for her help with bibliography development, manuscript management, and proofing. Thanks are also due to our three anonymous reviewers, who offered in-depth and thoughtful comments and suggestions that helped us shape the manuscript. We learned after the review process that these three reviewers were Kevin Kelly, Mark Maier, and Michael Palmer. Ted Major was a great support throughout the process but particularly during the final stages of the work; he read and edited the penultimate draft and offered practical suggestions based on his own classroom experience. Additionally, we continue to be grateful to K. Patricia Cross, whose pioneering work with classroom assessment and handbooks for college teachers laid the foundation for—and now bind together—the entire College Teaching Techniques series.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Elizabeth F. Barkley is professor of music at Foothill College, Los Altos, California. With over four decades as an innovative and reflective teacher, she has received numerous honors and awards, including being named California's Higher Education Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, formally recognized by the California State Legislature for her contributions to undergraduate education, selected as “Innovator of the Year” in conjunction with the National League for Innovation, presented with the Hayward Award for Educational Excellence, and honored by the Center for Diversity in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. In addition, her “Musics of Multicultural America” course was selected as “Best Online Course” by the California Virtual Campus. She was also named a Carnegie Scholar in the discipline of music by the Carnegie Foundation in conjunction with the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Beyond her academic discipline of music history, her interests include engaging students through active and collaborative learning; transforming face-to-face and online curriculum to meet the needs of diverse learners, especially those from new and emerging generations; contributing to the scholarship of teaching and learning; and connecting learning goals with outcomes and assessment. Barkley holds a BA and MA from the University of California, Riverside, and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. She is coauthor with Claire Howell Major of Learning Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty (Jossey-Bass, 2016). She is coauthor with Claire Howell Major and K. Patricia Cross of Collaborative Learning Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty, 2nd ed. (Jossey-Bass, 2014); author of Student Engagement Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty (Jossey-Bass, 2010) and several music history textbooks, including Crossroads: The Music of American Cultures (Kendall Hunt, 2013), World Music: Roots to Contemporary Global Fusions (Kendall Hunt, 2012), Crossroads: The Roots of America's Popular Music, 2nd ed. (Prentice Hall, 2007); and coauthor with Robert Hartwell of Great Composers and Music Masterpieces of Western Civilization (Kendall Hunt, 2014).

Claire Howell Major is professor of higher education at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. She teaches courses on college teaching, technology in higher education, reading research in the field of higher education, and qualitative research methods. Her research interests are in the areas of faculty work, pedagogical approaches, technology for teaching, and online learning. She also focuses on issues of higher education in popular culture and higher education as a field of study. She typically draws on qualitative methods to answer her research questions. Major holds a BA from the University of South Alabama, an MA from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and a PhD from the University of Georgia. She has authored and coauthored several books, including Teaching Online: A Guide to Theory, Research, and Practice (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015); Collaborative Learning Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty, 2nd ed., with Elizabeth F. Barkley and K. Patricia Cross (Jossey-Bass, 2014); The Essential Guide to Qualitative Research: A Handbook of Theory and Practice with Maggi Savin-Baden (Routledge, 2013); An Introduction to Qualitative Research Synthesis: Managing the Information Explosion with Maggi Savin-Baden (Routledge, 2011); and Foundations of Problem-Based Learning with Maggi Savin-Baden (Open University Press, 2004). Major also publishes her work in leading education journals and presents at national and international conferences.

PART ONE
A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR INTERACTIVE LECTURING

Introduction

In classrooms around the country, college teachers work hard to engage students in the kind of learning that will prepare them to meet the demands of an increasingly complex world. Some professors lecture, others use a variety of approaches that fall under the banner of active learning. All want students to learn. But what is the most effective way to help students learn? For decades, many educators have been caught up in a debate arguing which approach is best, but what if we reframed the debate and instead looked for ways to maximize the benefits of both pedagogies?

What if college teachers who lecture used a little more active learning? Would instruction be more effective if students spent some of their class time participating in discussions or engaging in group projects instead of spending all of their class time listening? Alternately, what if college teachers who now use only active learning strategies spent a little more time in engaging modes of telling? Would instruction be more effective if students spent some of their class time listening to professors directly share knowledge about the disciplines and fields that they love instead of students having to discover everything on their own? We believe that the answer to all of these questions is yes.

In Part 1 of this book, we present the conceptual framework for blending engaging lectures and active learning methods. In so doing, we lay out the key assumptions, concepts, and research related to the interactive lecturing model. It is a representation of the essential elements of the model and relationships between them. We have organized our framework into two chapters:

  • Chapter 1. Lecture versus Active Learning: Reframing the Debate. Here we describe the ongoing debate between educators who are at odds with each other over whether lecture or active learning is the better instructional method, and we suggest that we reframe the issue.
  • Chapter 2. Integrating Lectures and Active Learning. In this chapter, we present our model for interactive lecturing and share the research that underpins the model.