Andrew Salisbury co-lectures with students

Enhancing student participation is every teacher's dream, walking into a classroom and having every student focus on your every word for the duration of the lecture.  This blog post explains a very simple approach on how you can make a student orientated college into a student orientated classroom.

5-10 years ago the average attention span of a student was about 20 minutes, in contemporary times however, mainly due to the plethora of alternative activities that technology offers, the average span has reduced to around 10 minutes.  That is why Apple, considered as one of the best presenters in the world, never present with one person or one topic for more than 10 minutes.

I conducted the following experiment during a student presentation: I asked a student who was presenting alone to involve 2 other students from the audience (unknowing by the other students) within her presentation to elaborate on some of the presentation topics.  The utter attention and engagement I found from the other students was unbelievable; this led me to investigate this further.

I contacted some students who I knew would be game for an experiment (that is to say, students who were quite good public speakers).  Then the day came, I had already broken down my lecture into pieces that I was going to share with these 2 chosen students.  The response from the rest of the students was overwhelming, they loved it. This wasn't just from the passive students but also the students who presented.  After this lecture, I had students emailing me to get involved.

Obviously, the students who present get the benefit of the lecture itself and the course material, but also they have to learn the material well (this is the main concept), thus giving a double effect of learning and enhancing student involvement.

This is how you could get it started:

Step 1 -  it can be suggested that the lecturer in the first class gets to grips with the students and identifies possible candidates for the second week lecture, usually this can be achieved by focusing on the students that were the most involved in that first class. 

Step 2 - Approach the students individually and ask if they want to take part in some topics of your lecture.  Discuss what they have to do and give them the material to learn.

Step 3 - Create your lesson plan (a possible one is shown below).

• 1-10 mins - lecturer introduces topic.
• 10-12 mins - first student discusses the pre-defined example/case study.
• 12-22 mins - lecturer performs second part of lecture.
• 22-25 mins - video
• 25-35 mins - lecturer performs third part of lecture.
• 35-37 mins - second student discusses the pre-defined example/case study.
• 37-47 mins - lecturer closes the lecture.
• 47-50 mins - any final comments/questions.

Here are some final suggestions:

Number of students: from initial testing, 2 students seem to be optimal, though this system could work with 1, 2, 3 or 4 students, the more the students the more possibilities you have of error and losing focus that is why 2 is suggested at equal time intervals during the lecture.

Students backing out: of course, if due to illness or any other reason, the student is unable to participate nothing is lost, as the lecture will continue with the original course material which is his/her own, though in this case the lecturer him/herself will continue.

Timing issues (too long/too short): as is suggested above, 2-3 mins seems to be a good time.  The lecturer is relied on here to produce the appropriate examples/case studies/topics that can be explained in this length of time.

Material: as aforementioned, the material is from the lecturer, however, during one of my trials an enthusiastic student wanted to prepare some things himself, we got together before the lecture and the material he found was very good and relevant to the topic, so I put it in my presentation and he explained the example using his own and my own material.  But in general, it's a lot easier and quicker to give the students a couple of ready-made slides for them to learn.

Andrew Salisbury
Lecturer at Business Administration & Economics Department