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Learning in lectures

Do ‘interactive windows’ help?

Napier University, Edinburgh, UK, m.huxham{at}napier.ac.uk

Many educational development resources recommend making conventional lectures more interactive. However, there is little firm evidence supporting either the acceptability (to students) or efficacy of doing so. This research examined the use of short ‘interactive windows’ (discussions and problem-solving exercises) in first year evolution lectures delivered to between 73 and 126 students over five years. Semi-structured evaluations of the teaching, involving more than 500 responses, identified the interactive nature of the lectures as the single most popular feature of the sessions. The division of the year class into two separate groups allowed the opportunistic testing of how interactive windows influenced learning about discrete problems within each lecture. Two short problem-solving or discussion sessions were devised for each lecture; one of these sessions was taught interactively to the first student group, the second was taught interactively to the second group. Comparing test scores achieved in questions addressing these paired problems showed strong evidence for a generally weak, positive influence of the interactive windows on recall and learning.

Key Words: buzz groups • evaluation • interaction • lectures • recall

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