Transcript www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk Practical ways of making your lectures more interactive Ros O’Leary Economics Network www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk “College is a place where a professor's lecture notes go straight to the students'

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Practical ways of
making your lectures
more interactive
Ros O’Leary
Economics Network
www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk
“College is a place where a professor's
lecture notes go straight to the
students' lecture notes, without
passing through the brains of either”
(Mark Twain )
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“My lecture was a complete success,
but the audience was a failure”
(Anon)
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Plan
1. What are the issues with lectures?
2. Your approach to lecturing
3. Activities
4. Student learning of key concepts
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1. What makes a good
lecture?
What would make a bad lecture
for your students?
Lecture issues
•
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What makes a good
lecture?
• Problems with traditional lectures
– Too much focus on content to be ‘covered’
– Not enough focus on student learning
• Focus on student learning
– Recording
– Motivation
– Involvement
– Understanding
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Tell me and I will forget
Show me and I will remember
Involve me and I will understand
Step back and I will act
(Chinese proverb)
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2. Your approach
to lecturing
Students find it easy to follow what I
am saying
A. Strongly Agree
B. Agree
C. Neutral
D. Disagree
E. Strongly Disagree
Typically what proportion of your
lecture do you speak?
A. 100%
B. 90–99%
C. 80–89%
D. 70–79%
E. <70%
Which of the following best describes
the most important purpose of lectures?
A. To give students a clear
set of notes
B. To provide a framework
for students’ own work
C. To inspire students to
learn
D. To help students grasp
key concepts and theories
E. To prepare students for
assessment
How would you present an indifference diagram
showing income and substitution effects?
A. Show the complete diagram and
give students time to copy it down.
B. Show the complete diagram and
give students a copy.
C. Show the complete diagram and
give students access to it
beforehand.
D. Build up the diagram giving
students time to copy down each
step.
E. Give students a diagram showing
initial equilibrium and then build
up the effects of a price change
with students annotating their
diagram.
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A diversion
http://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk
/tips/powerpoint_abuse.htm
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3. Activities in lectures
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3. Activities
• Do not talk for the whole hour!
– Diminishing returns
• Attention wanes
• Comprehension and learning declines
– Give students things to
do that aid their learning
• Don’t worry about not
‘covering so much’
– Even give them a break
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3. Activities
• You must brief your students activities by
telling them
– exactly what you want them to do
– why you are asking them to do this
– how much time they have for the activity
– what the outcome will be
– to watch or listen for the signal you will use
to bring the break or activity to a close
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3. Activities
Examples of activities
Which did you choose on page 1
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.
H.
I.
Which did you choose on page 2
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.
H.
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3. Activities
• Activities
– Tests/quizzes (use of Audience Response System?)
– Brief discussion with neighbour
• e.g. policy implications
• List of advantages / disadvantages
– Doing a calculation / completing a diagram
– Worksheets
• Hybrid between lecture and workshop
• Break
–
–
–
–
Watch video
Compare notes
Tidy up your own notes
Entertainment
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[Threshold concepts can be]
'considered akin to passing through
a portal, or conceptual gateway, thus
opening up a new and previously
inaccessible way of thinking about
something'.
(Meyers and Land, 2003)
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3. Threshold concepts
• Expose students to how models are used in the
economics; why we set up models as we do.
• Help students to integrate their understanding
by:
– Highlighting variation in concepts when first
introduced
– Helping them re-work their understanding of
previously acquired concepts in the light of new
concepts
A reflective problem
Hope City is a Premier League football club
playing in Europe next season. It has had
enquiries from a well-known Spanish club for its
star player (£34 million has been mentioned) who
has a number of years to run on his contract. The
club needs to managed as a business. Assume
that the wage bill remains the same whatever the
club does.
What is the cost to the club of
keeping the player?
A. The value of the next best
alternative player
B. The cost incurred by the
club in developing the
player
C. The highest offer the club
can get for him on the
transfer market
D. The opportunity cost – the
goals and merchandise the
player generates
E. What the player would be
worth in his next best
alternative occupation
How would you work out whether or
not to keep the player?
A. If the club has major cash
flow problems and needs
the cash it should sell him
B. Assess the costs and
benefits of selling the
player to the club
C. Explore the ways in which
the club could spend the
highest offer and assess
whether the cost of
keeping the player
outweighs the benefits he
brings to the club
A ‘relating to other
concepts’ problem
A series of rail crashes which involved fatalities
has led the government to consider more
investment in rail safety measures.
How should the government decide whether to
invest in additional rail safety measures?
Which economic framework or model would be
most useful in helping you decide?
A. Choice
B. Opportunity cost
C. Marginal social
costs
D. Taxes
E. Scarcity
F. Marginal social
benefits
G. Economies of
scale
H. Elasticity
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3. Threshold concepts
www.staffs.ac.uk/schools/business/iepr/etc/
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Interactive lectures
• Activities within lectures
• Activities which help students apply key
and threshold concepts
• Looking at the overall provision in relation
to student outcomes
• Hybrid lectures or replacing lectures with
workshops