1.1 Opportunities provided by lectures

Lectures provide key opportunities for students to learn about the subject they have chosen to study in an efficient way. The lecture will typically convey and prioritise information about the subject in a relatively condensed format. It can also enthuse students and provide a suitable framework for further study. Students are exposed, most likely for the first time, to a professional scholar who may be a researcher at the forefront of that aspect of the discipline. Lectures provide a traditional link between research and teaching. They help to preserve a culture of learning in Higher Education in which undergraduate study is viewed as an induction into an academic discipline, a way of viewing the world.

There are also clear benefits to the lecturer. Assuming that an academic is lecturing on a similar topic each year, the up-front costs of preparing a set of lectures are offset by their re-usability. Also, the traditional lecture, being teacher centred, can minimise the stress for those academics that are hesitant to relinquish control of the learning process to students.

Lectures have additional benefits for the institution. It is seen as making an efficient use of the lecturer's time, since it allows teaching to take place in classes with a very high student/staff ratio. This is likely to become an increasingly compelling incentive in an era of declining resources. The Labour government’s stated objective of increasing participation towards 50% of those aged 18 to 30 by the end of the decade while maintaining standards could, according to the Association of University Teachers, mean that higher education institutions would need to find places for up to 670,000 more students in this time.

1.2 Inherent problems with the traditional lecture

Notwithstanding the apparent benefits detailed above, newer approaches to teaching and learning, such as problem-based learning, are increasingly being introduced on the grounds that, even for an equivalent investment of staff time, the learning outcomes of students are far improved. The use of techniques that aim to involve a greater amount of student involvement is of course nothing new. Tutorials, seminars and other variations on student-centred learning have long been used to complement lectures. However, the justification for abandoning or reducing the number of lectures on a course typically focuses on two criticisms: that lectures are a poor medium, first for conveying information and second for developing student understanding.

Conveying information to students

Are lectures an efficient means of conveying information to students? According to Miller (1956), the average number of items that can be held in short-term memory is 7 (±2). Therefore, if students do not have significant time to process new information one of two things happens, either previous information is displaced or the new information is lost. Lectures which proceed quickly simply do not give students sufficient time to process information. Similarly, the ability to concentrate for an hour or so while taking adequate notes is not something that can be taken for granted. Indeed, listening and note taking can be mutually exclusive activities, especially for more inexperienced students. It cannot be assumed that an hour-long lecture will result in an equivalent sum of learning taking place within a student’s head.

This problem can be compounded by the problems of a crowded curriculum. As new theories, research findings and policy initiatives emerge, space has to be found within the syllabus to accommodate them, and not always at the expense of existing content. If more and more content is crammed into a series of lectures it may encourage the lecturer to do little else but talk from the front from start to finish. The logical consequence of such practice is that the pace of lectures is forever quickening to ensure that the expanding syllabus is covered. A lecture could hardly be considered successful if it 'covered' the appropriate part of the syllabus and yet students retained little of what was said or were not guided in their private study.

Students are also more likely to remember information when it is structured in a logical fashion and if it is demonstrably meaningful to them. This again highlights the important of context to learning. Students need to comprehend why they are being taught what they are and how they will subsequently be assessed on it.

Developing student understanding

To judge the 'success' of a lecture, it is important to identify its intended learning outcomes. A lecture could hardly be considered successful if it 'covered' the appropriate part of the syllabus and yet students retained little of what was said or were not guided in their private study. Learning outcomes are often specified in module or course descriptors or handbooks. However, caution should be exercised in judging the success of a lecture against them, since these parts of the documents have often been prepared to meet university or QAA requirements, and compliance in this process by lecturing staff does not necessarily mean that the specified learning outcomes are the most appropriate or are even the ones that the lecturer would choose to identify.

In addition, whilst a lecture's success should be judged in terms of what students gain from it, it does not follow that lectures which students consider successful are necessarily good lectures. Students may prefer lectures that allow them to take notes which can be used directly in preparing for examinations or other forms of assessment. If their objective is to maximise marks subject to a time constraint, or to minimise time commitment subject to achieving a target mark, then this will almost certainly be the case. Similarly, a lecture might be very entertaining, and for that reason popular with students, and yet be a poor learning medium for students. Students are also likely to show a preference for the teaching format they are familiar with, as is equally the case with lecturers.

Assessment is clearly an indicator of student learning and hence of the success of lectures. But even if it were possible to separate the contribution of lectures from other learning media to assessment performance, the assessment itself may not capture the extent to which students have acquired and developed an understanding of the subject matter. To gauge this it is necessary to consider a theory of learning first developed by Marton and Säljö (1976a, 1976b) and since elaborated by Ramsden (1992), Biggs (1987, 1993) and Entwistle (1981). In these studies an important distinction is made between surface, strategic and deep learners. Surface learners are characterised as focusing on memorising words, formulae and theories rather than building relationships and connections. Surface learning is encouraged by:

• A heavy workload;
• An excessive amount of course material;
• A lack of independence;
• Assessment methods that emphasise recall and create anxiety;
• Poor or little feedback on progress; and
• A lack of interest in the subject.

Deep learners seek to relate theory to practice in a range of different contexts. They are able to organise their impressions into a coherent whole rather a set of disassociated facts. Deep learning is encouraged by:

• A choice over content and study methods
• Teaching methods that build on existing knowledge and experience
• Active involvement in their learning
• Long-term engagement with the subject

Strategic learners will adopt whichever approach they believe will maximise their grades. If they believe, rightly or wrongly, that the form of the examination rewards memorisation of disparate facts, they will adopt a surface approach. If they believe that the examination will reward a holistic understanding of key ideas and how these apply in different circumstances they are more likely to adopt a deep approach.

Most students cannot be so readily pigeon holed, displaying characteristics from two or more categories at any one time and may change their preferences over time. Nonetheless this theory exemplifies the potential shortcomings of a wholly didactic model where it is assumed that what is not said is not learnt. The purpose of this chapter is not to debate at length the merit of this models (further reading references are provided at the end), but to establish that the intention of any economics course should be more than simply to allow students to adopt surface-learning strategies that promote the accumulation of transient non-contextualised knowledge.

Finally there is the issue of the diversity of ability and prior experience of students. This is especially a problem at level 1, where lecture groups tend to be larger, where some students are new to the subject and others have A' level Economics and/or Maths or equivalent, and where exit routes can vary from Single Honours Economics degrees to degrees where no further economics will be studied beyond level 1. How can a traditional lecture cope with diversity? To which students should the lecture be pitched? What back-up support will be necessary for the weaker students and what additional learning activities will stretch the stronger students?

2.1 Student preparation for the lecture

In some cases, it may be appropriate for students to come to a lecture 'cold', especially if it is an initial scene-setting lecture. Generally, however, students will gain more from a lecture if they have done some preparatory work. You could assign them reading or specific tasks. If so, you would probably have to address the question of incentives for students to do this work. This could amount to simple exhortation in previous lectures or in handbooks or online information, where the importance of the preparatory work was stressed. Alternatively, it could be built into a more formal process of study, leading to some specific individual or group work by students.

Top Tip 1: Giving preparatory work for the lecture helps students to see the relevance of the lecture and they will probably learn more.

Prior work could include:

• Using the Web to provide background information. For example, if you were about to introduce the theory of international trade, you could get students to find out about recent debates and issues, such as trade disputes, the agenda for WTO meetings or the views of various interest groups. Such groups could include the US administration, the European Commission, particular industries (such as farming or steel), environmental groups, or various Third World interests (see for example, www.oneworld.net). If you were about to look at competition policy, you could ask students to look at the summaries of Competition Commission reports on http://www.competition-commission.org.uk/press_rel/index.htm.

• Revisiting relevant theory covered earlier. For example, in the case of trade, the students could be required to revise production possibility curves, opportunity cost, or general equilibrium theory, depending on whether the teaching is at introductory or intermediate level. In the case of competition policy, students could be required to revise relevant parts of the theory of the firm. The lecture could start with a quick 'quiz' using multiple-choice questions (see below on the technology for quizzes and tests in lectures).
• Asking students to identify a set number of issues to do with the topic. This will help them to contextualise the material and see its relevance. These issues could be posted to a discussion board, so that other students could read them. For example, as preparation for a trade theory lecture, you could ask the students to identify recent trade disputes and the arguments used by the various parties to justify their stance, or you could ask them to consider the arguments for and against providing protection for a specific ailing export industry.
• Assigning reading to be completed before the lecture. This could be an introduction to theory or relevant evidence, perhaps from a textbook or an article. A brief quiz on this could be given at the beginning of the lecture, so as to provide an incentive for the students to do the work.

In all the above cases, clear guidance will need to be given to students about what is required of them. This could be given in student handbooks, but should probably be reinforced by having a discussion early on in the course in seminars about the role of lectures and how students can maximise the learning benefits from them.

2.2 Effective presentation

Students are likely to learn more if a lecture is well structured and well presented. Not every lecturer has a charismatic personality, but students can still be engaged and find the lecture an effective learning experience if thought is given to the structure and method of presentation. This section reviews four issues in planning the structure of a lecture: aims and learning objectives; overview and clarity of structure; use of examples and pace. The second half of the section examines three aspects of method of presentation: presenting graphs and equations; using boards, OHTs and PowerPoint; and Using videos. The section concludes with some observations on dealing with disruption.

Aims and learning objectives

It has become commonplace for lecturers to give the aims and learning objectives at the beginning of a lecture, usually in the form of an overhead transparency (OHT) or a PowerPoint slide. One of the main drivers for this has been Subject Review and the stress placed on making intended learning outcomes transparent. Whilst it is good practice for students to see the purpose of what is to come in the lecture and what they are supposed to learn, beginning the lecture with a bullet list of aims and learning objectives in educational jargon can be a 'turn-off' for students. It is important to communicate in 'student-friendly' language. For example, if the learning objectives of a lecture include an understanding of a particular economic theory – its properties, its assumptions, how it can be applied and what its limitations are – then state this as such, rather than in terms of, say, the development of cognitive or analytical skills.

The format of lecture objectives also gives students an indication of the approach to learning that is expected of them. For example, an objective in the form ‘Movements along and shifts in the demand curve’ implies that students are required to memorise a list of causes and how to depict these on a simple diagram. An objective ‘Analyse changes in the demand for consumer products using a market demand curve’ implies that the focus of assessment will be on understanding examples of economic behaviour in practice. The signals communicated by these objectives may indicate to students whether surface or deep learning is expected.

Top Tip 2: Students need to comprehend why they are being taught what they are and how they will subsequently be assessed on it.

Overview, contextualising and clarity of structure

At the start of a lecture it is even more important to give students a sense of how the lecture fits into the syllabus and how it follows on from the previous lecture. A ‘lecture map’ on an OHT or PowerPoint side can be used to outline the structure of the lecture in terms of main topics, issues and theory. This summary can be referred to as the lecture progresses, helping to retain and reinforce the students' grasp of the lecture's structure. This can also be referred to at the end as part of a brief summary of what has been covered.

Top Tip 3: If you give the students a 'lecture map' on an OHT or PowerPoint slide, this can be referred to as the lecture progresses, thereby helping to retain and reinforce the students' grasp of the lecture's structure. This can also be referred to at the end as part of a brief summary of what has been covered.

Use of examples

Brief up-to-date examples, or appropriate historical examples, can make the lecture much more interesting for students and help them to see the relevance of theory. Careful thought should be given to the number and nature of examples. Too many examples and the students might not be able to 'see the wood for the trees'; too few examples and the material could appear dry and disconnected from reality.

Examples could be very short: for example, reference to some current news item or to some real examples of something (e.g. of actual firms when discussing market structures); or, for a quantitative, lecture a very brief worked example. Students' understanding of economic concepts is likely to be much better if they can relate them immediately to the concrete. There is an opportunity cost of using examples in terms of time not spent covering additional material, but again, if the success of a lecture is to be judged in terms of learning outcomes, this may be a cost worth incurring.

Pace

Pace is crucial to the success of any lecture. It is very easy for lecturers to imagine that if something has been said, then it has been understood and absorbed by students. Part of this mindset is the perception of students as receptacles: ‘At the beginning of the lecture, you lift the lid on students' heads, pour in an hour's worth of knowledge, close the lids and the students walk out wiser than when they arrived’. Although we all know that this not how students learn, we are frequently faced with the dilemma of how to ‘cover all the material’ in the lecture.

The problem stems from two main sources. The first is that courses that have become tightly structured to meet the requirements of auditing and quality assurance. This can remove the flexibility of being able to vary the pace and content in response to student feedback or current events. The second is an increasingly crowded curriculum. Whilst we strive to keep courses up-to-date and include new theoretical developments, policies and applications we are reluctant to delete an equivalent amount of old material. Take the case of a core level 2 Macro module. If we want to look at the development of macroeconomic theory, do we include both classical and Keynesian analysis, the monetarist critique, the rational expectations revolution, new classical theory, real business cycle theory, new Keynesian theory, post-Keynesian analysis, models to incorporate inflation targeting, such as the Romer model with aggregate demand considered as a function of inflation rather than the price level in addition to the traditional AD/AS model, and so on? In other words, do we keep adding new developments to the existing course? Our module specifications say that in lecture x we will cover topic y, and yet in topic y we want to include more and more each year. What is the solution?

The solution is not to speak faster and faster! Students would almost certainly end up learning less, not more. Either you have to reduce the syllabus content so that it can be covered in sufficient depth and at an appropriate pace within the lecture time, or you have to abandon the notion that the lecture should be used to 'cover' all the material. If this latter is to be the solution, then you have to plan carefully how the lecture fits in with the remaining parts of the students' learning. Is it to be used to introduce topics, or to go thought the core theory, or to give pointers or examples not available elsewhere?

Pacing is not just about covering an appropriate amount of material. You will have to decide just what you want students to do in lectures. If you merely want students to copy down notes, it would probably be more efficient to give them the notes as a handout, or post them on your Intranet (unless a key purpose of the lecture is for students to learn the skills of rapid note taking, in which case some specific instruction in the process would probably be a good idea). Presumably, you will want students to understand what you are covering, to see its relevance and to be motivated to learn more. In that case, the pacing must take account of this. The planning and delivery of the lecture will need to balance demands on students' writing, listening, watching and understanding. It is too easy to put up an OHT or a complete PowerPoint slide and then start talking about it straight away. What are the students to do? Are they to copy it down or concentrate on what you are saying? If you want them to take something down, it might be best to pause while they do so, especially if it is something they are unlikely to grasp immediately.

An important part of pacing is recognising the attention span of students. This tends to drop off quickly after 20 minutes, unless the students are particularly excited or fascinated by what you have to say (see Bligh, 1998). Part of the solution lies in varying the pace through examples or anecdotes when attention is likely to flag. You could vary the use of visual materials, so that sometimes the students would be concentrating on them and at other times on you; sometimes copying things down and at others just listening or composing their own notes. The key is to inject light and shade: to vary the tempo, the nature of the material and what is required of students. Alternatively you could move away from the lecture being solely a talk and engage the students in various activities. Some suggestions are given in section 2.3.

Presenting graphs and equations

If you are using OHTs or PowerPoint slides, an effective way of presenting graphical or mathematical material is to give the students a half-complete diagram or proof which is completed it in the lecture. For example, if you were presenting a model which shows an initial equilibrium position and then the effects of a shift in one or more curves, you could give the students the initial position (with or without the equilibrium marked) and ask students to complete the diagram. This is particularly useful for complex diagrams, such as general equilibrium diagrams. Not only does it save time by avoiding the need for students to copy down the initial part of the diagram, but it also ensures that students can focus on the key points you are making. It is also likely to mean that the finished diagram that the students are drawing is accurate.

This approach allows learning to be an active, yet efficient, experience. Learning is likely to be more active if you ask the students to complete the diagram or proof first and then you go through it. But even asking students to copy down the additional material is likely to make learning more active and effective than students rushing to copy a complete model. If they are copying the key parts (e.g. the effects of a shift in a curve), they have more time to reflect on what is happening in the model.

Resources provided in this way may cause problems in terms of cost and equal opportunities. Can your department afford to make copies free to students? If you make them available electronically, what will you do about students with no personal access to a PC or a printer? Is it acceptable to sell these materials to students? One solution adopted by several departments is to produce detailed course handbooks with lecture outlines. These outlines could contain the partially complete diagrams and proofs. The handbooks could be sold to the students at cost, with all students expected to purchase them. However, this practice incurs up-front cost in preparation time, and reduced scope to amend the teaching programme in response to student feedback.

Using boards, OHTs and PowerPoint

Whether using the whiteboard/blackboard, OHTs or PowerPoint slides, it is important to give careful thought to what you want the students to do. In lieu of any other guidance, students will assume that you intend the displayed material to be copied down. If used well, visual materials can considerably improve learning by providing a clear structure for the lecture. If the structure remains on the screen, or is referred back to at the start of each new section, students will find it easier to see how the various parts of the lecture are related, even if their attention wanders for a period of time. Similarly, if students lose the thread of an argument, they will be able to pick up the thread from a ‘lecture map’ presented on a slide or board.

But how much material should you display? If you display a lot, students will spend a relatively large proportion of the lecture simply copying things down. Is this an efficient use of their time? Would it be better to give them a handout or post the material on the Intranet? If you do want them to copy things down, then you must allow enough time for them to do this.

An advantage off using a board is that your writing speed imposes a natural brake on the rate at which students have to process new information. However, if you are talking while you are writing, students will have great difficulty in listening to what you say, copying what you write, and adding notes on what you are saying. Also, some students may find difficulty in reading your handwriting, or in hearing what you say if your back is turned while you are writing.

If you use OHTs or PowerPoint slides, the problem of note taking can be worse, as the slides are already complete. Too often, lecturers display a slide and then start talking about it straight away. What is the student to do: copy the slide or take down your comments? For experienced lecturers, this may sound obvious, but it is easy for all of us to fall into the trap of expecting students at one and the same time to copy a slide and to listen to our commentary on a slide and annotate their copy of it accordingly.

One solution to the time constraint is to give students your lecture slides in advance, whether in hard copy, or as Word, PowerPoint or other file. If the slides are merely headings, the students can then make their lecture notes under them.

Top Tip 4: Whatever media you use, it is important not to display too much material and to give students time to take things down.

If you are using PowerPoint, you can animate your slides so that bullets or paragraphs or stages in a mathematical demonstration appear one at a time. Similarly you can animate graphs by having lines appear one at a time. They can easily be made to shift in the required direction. A little playing around with the 'Slide show', 'Custom animation' feature can enable you to display diagrams in an interesting and effective way. Increasingly, textbook publishers provide OHTs and/or PowerPoint files of lecture outlines. While these can save you time in preparation, there is the danger that they can make the lecture too 'pre-programmed' in a way that does not necessarily match your style of delivery or the content you wish to cover. In this respect, PowerPoint files are clearly much more flexible than OHTs, since you can customise them to suit your particular lectures.

Use of videos

Many lecture theatres are equipped with video players, to be used either through large televisions or through a data projector. Alternatively, many lecture theatres permit the playing of DVDs through a PC or laptop and data projector. Video streamed material can also be displayed through a data projector via a PC or laptop. The quality of video streaming, however, is considerably inferior to that of VHS and DVDs. Whichever projection method is used, video images can add substantially to the impact of a lecture.

Two important questions to consider in using videos are ‘What length of clip should I use?’ and ‘What are the best sources of video material?’ If the video is being used to illustrate a point it is best to keep the clip to no more than five minutes. This change of media and pace can aid students’ concentration and help them to see the relevance of points you are making. Even with a short video clip, the relevance of the clip may not be obvious to all students. You may well need to introduce the clip so as to prime students about what you want them to gain from it.

Top Tip 5: Video clips, if used carefully, can considerably enhance student learning by helping to contextualise material through the provision of examples. By providing interest and variety in a lecture, they can increase student motivation and interest.

Sometimes you may wish to show a longer extract. For example, you may wish to use the video as a case study. There is a potential problem here. With the exception of videos made for educational purposes, the pace and structure of the video may make it difficult for the student to make notes. If this is the case, you might find it useful to display some bullet points on an OHP while the video is playing. These could help to make the structure of the video more transparent.

One of the most effective uses of video is to give a topical illustration of a point or to set the scene with something in the news. Probably the best sources here are news magazine programmes, such as Newsnight on BBC2 and Channel 4 News. Other broadcast sources include Panorama and The Money Programme.

Most universities hold an ERA (Educational Recording Agency) Licence. This allows free use of TV material for educational purposes. The licence permits you or any other university employee to record programmes off air at home or at the university, to make multiple copies (e.g. for depositing in the library) and to compile extracts. You can edit, but not adapt the recordings. You can show all or part of a programme, so long as it is for educational purposes. The video/DVD should be labelled, 'This recording is to be used only for educational purposes'. Open University recordings require a separate licence. There is no licensing scheme to cover cable or satellite broadcasts and you are free to copy and show these. It is advisable to check with your university the precise nature of what you can and cannot show.

Dealing with disruption

Hopefully, you will not experience this. If you do, you need first to be aware of why the disruption is occurring. It is likely to stem from lack of student involvement and boredom. While it would be nice to think that you are so charismatic that this could never occur, the solution lies not so much in how good a performer you are, but rather in what the students themselves are being required to do in the lecture.

If they are merely being required to listen for an hour, they are very likely to get bored unless you are a superb entertainer. To keep students engaged, try the following (several of which are examined in more detail below):

• ensuring that they have a clear understanding of the structure of the lecture and its relevance to the rest of the module;
• changing the pace;
• giving students different activities (such as short questions to test their understanding);
• making it possible for them to take notes by not going too fast;
• making careful use of visual aids;
• illustrating points with examples; and
• giving them one or two short breaks.

Sometimes, students studying economics are doing so reluctantly, either because they had no choice (e.g. they are studying an economics module as a compulsory module on a non-economics degree) or because the subject has turned out to be different from what they had expected. The solution here is to focus on the relevance of the subject to their degree and more generally to important social issues. If they can see that economics grapples with real-world problems, and if what you are doing with them helps them to gain a better understanding of these problems and possible solutions to them, they are likely to be much more sympathetically disposed to studying the subject. If, despite the above, students are disruptive (by talking, leaving the lecture, coming in late, etc.), then deal with it directly. If you ignore it, it will probably get worse. First try talking to the whole lecture group about your expectations of them and why 'good behaviour' is vital. Then, on any subsequent occasion when disruption occurs, address the culprits directly and, if necessary, ask them to leave.

2.3 Activities in lectures

An hour (or even 50 minutes) is a long time to listen and concentrate. As we have seen, concentration and retention rapidly diminishes after 20 minutes. Not only should student learning be as active as possible, it should be efficient. Ideally, a student should be able to:

• Identify main points;
• Distinguish the important from the diversion;
• Identify when the same point is being presented in different ways;
• Perceive connections (e.g. between one theory or part of a theory and another);
• Relate examples to concepts and theories; and
• Relate evidence to propositions.

These can all be aided by a careful use of activities in lectures and this section examines different types of activity that could be used. The inclusion of activities comes at the expense of time the lecturer would otherwise spend in talking to the students. The case for using activities is that the breadth and depth of students’ understanding is increased even though the sheer quantity of information communicated by the lecturer is reduced.

Top Tip 6: The more active the participation of students, the longer and better will they be able to concentrate.

Tests/quizzes

One of the most effective ways of making learning a more active process and helping students to check on their understanding and learn from their mistakes is to give them questions. The simplest forms include multiple-choice, true/false or listing. The questions can be displayed on an OHP or a PowerPoint slide, although, as Case Study 1 illustrates, there are more sophisticated ways of doing this. The questions could be at the beginning of a topic. For example, if you were about to look at monopoly, you could give the students a list of companies and ask them to identify which are monopolies. Having done this, you could then look at the difficulties of identification, when the boundaries of an industry are 'fuzzy'; the importance of market power; the measurement of market power; types of barriers to entry, etc. In each case you could use the examples from the quiz. Students would then grasp the theoretical points you were making, having first considered some examples and being able to relate your arguments to them.

Alternatively, the questions could be given at the end of a section. This could then test students' understanding. If you then asked for responses (e.g. hands up those who answered A…), this would give an indication of how well key points had been understood. You might also ask students to write down their answers and pass them to their neighbour to mark. When students see what their neighbour has written they can learn from each other as well as from the lecturer, especially if they are asked to spend a couple of minutes justifying their answer to their neighbour.

Top Tip 7: The use of multiple-choice or other simple response questions two or three times per lecture can help to provide a break in pace, an opportunity for reflection and reinforcement and a check on students' understanding.

Worksheet or material on OHP

An alternative to short questions is to give the students a problem or some data to consider. This could be on paper, with the students picking up a worksheet at the beginning of the lecture, or it could be displayed on the OHP. It is normally a good idea for students to attempt such questions in pairs as they can learn from each other. It also makes the exercise more fun. You can then go through the question from the front. You might also ask students to read a passage that you hand out and then to answer one or two questions on it. The passage could be from a newspaper, book, journal or magazine. It is probably best to make the questions relatively closed. For example, if the lecture focuses on exchange rates, you could give them a brief news article reporting changes in exchange rates between two or more currencies and then ask them to identify possible causes of these changes. More open-ended questions are normally best considered in seminars, where students have the opportunity to discuss their answers with the group.

Completing diagrams or proofs

Copying down mathematical arguments or diagrams can be a fairly mindless exercise. Giving students a partially complete proof or diagram and then asking them to fill in the extra material can help (as argued above), since the student has time to reflect and to focus on the key points you are attempting to convey. For example, if you were looking at income and substitution effects using indifference analysis, you could present the students with a diagram which included the indifference map and the initial budget line, and then ask them to draw the new budget line and the income and substitution effects. By presenting them with the diagrams in this way would allow you to ensure that they could clearly distinguish between normal, inferior and Giffen goods.

You can make this process more active by stopping part way through presenting a model and getting students to fill in the next step. They can do this individually or discuss it with their neighbour. Alternatively you can test their understanding at a particular point by asking them which way a particular curve shifts if you change a particular variable, or getting them to repeat a particular mathematical step using different numbers.

Making lists

These can be useful for getting students to think expansively or to think about policy or other implications. For example, you could ask them to identify a list of possible determinants of a shift in a curve or a list of advantages and disadvantages of a particular policy. They could do this individually or with their neighbour; or they could start by doing it individually and then compare their list with their neighbour's or get their neighbour to mark them against a list that you supply.

The hybrid between a lecture and workshop

You might restrict the formal lecture on a topic to 20 minutes and then set students some work to do, either through a worksheet or questions on an OHP. The questions could be in the form of calculations or data response, preferably of the closed variety. You could go through the questions at the end, or post the answers on your Intranet. This practice is illustrated in Case Study 2. Alternatively, you might give students a set of questions on a case study or an article. The formal lecture might be presented as a follow-up to the questions or it might be used to introduce the key ideas that will be investigated further through the questions. Either way, it is important for you to integrate the case study or article carefully with the lecture to ensure that students are getting the best from both parts.

2.4 Use of breaks in lectures

Given the decline in student attention after some 15 to 20 minutes, it makes sense to give students a break during the lecture. When the lecture resumes, attention is likely to be restored to its original or near original level. This does require, however, that you avoid the temptation to fill the lecture time with you talking, under the mistaken belief that the more you succeed in saying, the more students will be receiving.

If you do opt to give students one or more short breaks, there are several things that you can ask students to do with this time. Some are related to the lecture; some are not.

Breaks related to the lecture

You can ask the students to use the break to reflect on what they have learned so far in the lecture. A good way of using this ‘pause for reflection’ is to get them to look through the notes they have taken and ‘revise’ what you have covered in the first part of the lecture. One way in which they could do this is to re-work the material into a ‘Mind-Map’ diagram (Buzan and Buzan, 1994). If this lecture follows on from a previous one, you could also ask them to check that their notes follow on from the previous lecture.

Top Tip 8: You could ask students to compare and discuss notes with their neighbour. Students will benefit from giving as well receiving feedback.

Breaks unrelated to the lecture

The simplest form of break is to give the students a few minutes just to stop and have a bit of quiet time or to chat to their neighbour. If the room lends itself, you could let them move around. Such breaks can get noisy and so it is important to set ‘rules’ that allow you to end the break quickly so that the lecture can resume. An alternative to the ‘pure’ break is to provide some form of entertainment. Many lecturers may feel uncomfortable about this, but it can prove very popular with students and the complete change can be very effective in helping to restore concentration. For example you might show an entertaining video clip or read a diverting and interesting text. The video clip could be a cartoon or a comedy sketch, or anything that you feel the students might like (within reason). You could even serialise a programme. Alternatively you could show an economics item from the week’s news which, even if unrelated to the lecture, can reinforce the relevance of economics to current issues. This can be very useful at level 1 for students who will not study the subject again, or who might be persuaded to do so if their interest can be sufficiently aroused. You might choose some text from a news extract or even a poem. You could even arrange with a colleague to come into your lecture to read something (a ‘favour’ you could reciprocate). You could assign students in rota to bring something to read out – although you may have to vet their contribution in advance!

Top Tip 9: A short 'entertainment' break is likely to prove popular with students and thereby improve motivation. The break would improve concentration afterwards. If students end up learning more, it could be time well spent.

2.5 Overcoming barriers to more active learning in lectures

Section 2 has presented a number of alternatives to traditional practice in economics lectures. Whilst these approaches are becoming increasingly common in practice, there are a number of barriers which restrict their adoption:

• Preparation time: preparing materials (e.g. PowerPoint slides), rewriting lecture notes, etc.;
• Other time costs: maintaining a Virtual Learning Environment, answering student questions in an online environment, the time taken to gain and evaluate student feedback;
• Risks: students may react adversely to being challenged (at least initially); the new methods may not be successful in terms of learning outcomes as hoped; you may feel uncomfortable in a new lecturing environment;
• Reactions of colleagues: if you take a ‘radical’ approach to lectures, and the students like it, there could be an adverse reaction from more conservative colleagues; there may be a departmental expectation of what a lecture should be and this may be a very traditional model of ‘covering material’; and
• Financial considerations: the use of technology (such as a personal response system or aspects of a Virtual Learning Environment) may require hardware, software and technical support, all of which may be blocked for financial reasons.

Given the above, it is often easier to introduce change iteratively. Try some small activity in a lecture that takes no more than a few minutes, or try introducing a break for a couple of minutes. See how successful it is. Try revisiting your learning objectives and asking whether the lecture really addresses them. Consider whether you are making the best use of the materials you make available to students. Do they contain too much or too little material? Should they be made available before or after the lecture? Revisit how the seminars build on the lecture material. Consider how you present information on OHTs or PowerPoint slides. Do you want students to copy them down? Why? Are you giving them long enough? What work do you expect your students to have done before the lecture? Should you assign specific preparatory activities?

This is not to say that you should not introduce radical change, but a progressive approach is probably safer, less costly and more practical. Try limiting changes initially to things that do not take up more time. Once you have learned how to manage the new processes efficiently, they may save you time. For example students may use more forms of self-help and rely less on coming to see you, or you may be able to rely more on FAQs on a discussion board. This could then allow you to devote more time to other forms of student support or to developing materials.

3.1 Work for seminars and tutorials.

Typically, lectures are directly related to seminars or tutorials and it is worth stressing the importance of carefully integrating the two. You will need to address the following questions.

• How much time do you want students to spend on follow-up private study after the lecture before coming to the seminar? This should be made clear to students, so that they can maximise the benefits from the seminar. It is unwise to assume that students will know what is expected of them.
• Do you want to refer back to material or activities in previous seminars? If you do, this is likely to give students a greater understanding of how the course is structured.
• Do the seminar questions directly relate to the material covered in the lecture? Here you will need to decide whether the lecture material needs reinforcing through seminar questions or whether the seminar could be used for follow-up work, such as examining policy implications. For example, a seminar following a lecture on fiscal policy could involve students preparing a Budget based on information provided to them beforehand or examining the details of a particular Budget.
• If you are going to use various short activities in lectures, including diagram and table manipulation, completing proofs, etc., does this enable you to do more creative things in seminars? For example, you could reduce the amount of 'drilling' in seminars (such as going through numerical exercises) and increase the amount of debate on policy issues (see chapter on seminars).
• Do you use some of the time in seminars to allow students to ask about points they did not understand in the lectures? Do you actively encourage them to do this? If so, are there any other ways of achieving the same objectives that you might consider using, such as discussion boards to which you reply or student self-support groups (see chapter on VLEs)? These alternatives could release seminar time for other activities and prevent them becoming in part a repeat of the lecture.

It is impossible to give answers to these questions that are appropriate to all circumstances. For example, the most appropriate answer will depend on the nature of the learning objectives and the type of work students are expected to undertake outside of lectures and seminars. However, it is important to stress the need to integrate the lectures and seminars and to use each to complement the other.

3.2 Online materials

Posting materials, such as lecture notes and copies of PowerPoint slides, has become commonplace. These could be within a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), such as Blackboard or WebCT, or on the course Web site, Intranet or shared drive. If learning in lectures is to be an active experience for students, you will need to have a clear strategy for the use of these materials. If they are too detailed and follow the lecture very closely, they could be seen as a substitute for the lecture by the student. You may well want them to be so, thereby giving students greater flexibility in their modes of study. In this case, however, you will need to address the issue of students merely downloading the materials and not actually using them, but being lulled into a false sense of security that they can use them ‘later’.

Online materials can support student learning more effectively if they are integrated with the seminar programme and related to assessment. If your course is in a Virtual Learning Environment, you can use its features to organise the materials within the scheduled programme and, if you choose, make them available for only a specific period of time. This can provide an incentive for students to access the materials shortly after the lecture.

More creative use of online materials as a follow-up to lectures would include interactive ‘study guide’ questions. For example, if you were covering a particular model in the lecture, you could set a series of questions online for students to test, consolidate and deepen their understanding of the model. These questions could be multiple choice, problems or manipulating graphs. You could choose whether to make the answers available online. Questions sets are readily available, whether through the Economics Network question bank, the Economics Network links to resources section or from textbook publishers’ sites or electronic resources.

If you are using online study guides, you will need to decide what incentives there will be for students to use them. How closely will you link them to assessment? Will you encourage students to work in small groups and what are the incentive mechanisms for encouraging them to do so?

3.3 Use of interactive facilities in VLEs

The use of VLEs is discussed more fully in a later chapter. This section provides a brief overview of possible links between lectures and a VLE.

Discussion boards

One useful mechanism for encouraging students to make full use of their learning in lectures is to set up a discussion board. This is easy to do in a VLE, but even a conventional email list can serve the purpose. You can post questions on the lecture that follow on directly from its contents and students would be expected to respond. For example, if the lecture was examining market failures, the discussion could be based on particular examples of market failure and possible policy solutions. You can ‘require’ students to make a set minimum number of contributions. You can log their contributions and decide on an appropriate encouragement or ‘penalty’ for students who do not contribute.

If you do set up a discussion board, you will have to decide what students can expect of you. If you merely ‘pump prime’ it and then expect students to make all the contributions, it can be relatively undemanding in terms of your time. If used in this way, it can be a very useful mechanism for promoting a culture of mutual self-help.

Chat rooms as virtual seminars

As an alternative or addition to using a discussion board, you could set up a chat room in a VLE. Students could log on at a particular time and you could choose whether or not to lead it, merely start it off or not be present at all. The virtual seminar could last for a set length of time or could be open ended. The advantage of the former is that it requires a clear commitment of time by the student and is seen as something structured. The open-ended seminar has the advantage that it can continue as long as it is valuable to the remaining students.

Either way, the seminar can be seen as a discussion session on the lecture, whose purpose is to help students to sort out problems they may have. These may be simple questions of clarification or they may be issues of contextualisation or application. Alternatively, you could start the seminar by giving some follow-up material from the lecture – an example, case study or problem – and posing the students some questions based on it.

To get the students used to using the chat room facility and to the protocols for ‘synchronous’ debate, it is a good idea to hold the first of these seminars in a computer lab with you present to answer questions about how to use the facility and to ensure that people are contributing. Thereafter, students can take part in the seminar from any computer with Web access.

It is important to recognise an important limitation of chat rooms: they have poor graphical and algebraic facilities. This makes them unsuitable for technical discussions. They can be excellent, however, for exploring policy implications and for examining issues where there is scope for differences in opinion. They can also provide a medium in which shy students can feel comfortable in contributing, especially if you allow them to use an alias, with their true identity known only to you.

If one of these virtual seminars is held after each lecture (in addition to normal face-to-face seminars), it can significantly deepen students’ learning from the lecture and make them feel that they have an opportunity to contribute.

If you have time, you can post edited ‘highlights’ from the seminar. Failing this, you can simply leave the contributions on the site for students to revisit in their own time.

Follow up questions by students

You could encourage students to contact you if they have queries about the lecture. If you do not want to answer the same question over and over again, then you could again use a discussion board with a ‘frequently asked questions’ (FAQ) section. Once you have answered a question once and posted the answer, then you will not answer it again. The students would be expected to consult the FAQ section to check that any question they ask you has not already been answered. This can save you a lot of time and is very useful for encouraging a culture of self-help in learning, rather than students simply expecting ‘to be told’. An FAQ section could be substituted for half of your office hours and you could dedicate the released time to answering the online questions.

Top Tip 10: Encourage students to answer questions posed by other students after the lecture on a discussion board. You need only intervene if the students were not working their way to the 'right' answers. This is a mechanism for encouraging self-help.

3.4 Assigned work

Assigned work: private study

Rather than merely expecting students to follow-up the lecture by reading or working through questions, you could assign them work to do. If you are not assessing this assigned work, whether summatively or purely formatively, you will need to provide incentives to encourage students to complete this work.

You could emphasise the intrinsic benefits of the work in helping them to improve their understanding and, thereby, their final grade. You might also emphasise the development of subject-specific and generic skills that will be of benefit to them later in their studies or in their career. The use of log books or a system of personal development portfolios would help to encourage this more holistic and reflective approach.

The assigned work could help students to prepare for the next lecture. For example, if in the next lecture you are going to develop a theory that you have introduced, you could set students a couple of case studies that put the theory into an applied context or set a couple of problems that require the students to use the theory. For example, if you have been looking at Keynesian goods market analysis, or ISLM analysis, and were planning to look at fiscal policy in the next lecture, you could get the students to study particular features of the last Budget and how they relate to projections made in the Financial Statement and Budget Report. This type of work can help students to see how the lectures are linked. It is useful to pose one or two questions at the beginning of the next lecture to evaluate this work. These could be in the form of multiple-choice questions on an OHP. A show of hands would be a simple way of checking how well the students had answered them. A personal response system is a more sophisticated approach (see Case Study 1 below).

Assessed work: formative and summative

There are several ways in which lectures can be linked to assessment. First, students’ understanding of the material may be tested directly. A seminar shortly after the lecture could begin with an objective test, a short essay, a problem, or a case study. Second, the lecture could be directly relevant to an examination or formally assessed assignment. Students are likely to be motivated by the knowledge that a specific lecture covers material directly relevant to a question posed in the examination. However, while this might be an effective means of getting students to attend the lecture and to concentrate, it could encourage surface learning if it merely provides an opportunity for students to regurgitate material. If deeper learning is to be encouraged, then students would need to know that the form of the assessment will require them to apply, rather than reproduce, the understanding gained through the lecture.

Third, students’ lecture notes could be assessed. This could form a small part of summative assessment, if clear marking criteria have been given to students. Alternatively, students could read and provide written comments on each other’s notes. This commentary could then be assessed. This approach provides benefits to students through the commentaries they receive from peers and the reflection on note-taking that the assessment encourages. Fourth, each student could be asked to provide a commentary on one lecture which would be distributed to other students and formally assessed. The number off students commenting on each lecture would vary according the size of the lecture group. Once students have prepared their commentary they could be disseminated through a VLE, Intranet or shared drive. You could require that word processed notes should have appropriate diagrams and tables in PowerPoint or Excel, pasted into the document. With a large lecture group, you could assign some students to act as editors of the notes. These types of activity not only encourage students to take a more reflective approach to their learning in lectures but also help to develop précis and critical skills. They also signal the importance of lectures and provide useful feedback to you.

5.1 Case Study 1: The use of a Personal Response System

Dr. Caroline Elliott, Lancaster University

Having lectured on the second year undergraduate Microeconomic Principles course for a number of years, I was aware that many students found this course academically challenging, and often rather 'dry'. Consequently, in the 2000/2001 I introduced a Personal Response System (PRS), purchased from Varitronix. A PRS allows a lecturer to ask multiple-choice questions, to which students respond using a hand-held transmitter. Receivers relay answers to a computer where they are collated, with response summaries shown via an LCD display. The technology offers the lecturer and students opportunities to assess understanding, and the lecturer can re-visit material that has not been sufficiently well understood. In addition, the PRS necessitates active student learning in lectures, and so may sustain student concentration and interest levels.

During any 50-minute lecture I would punctuate my presentation by asking approximately five multiple-choice questions. Typically, I used questions to test students' understanding of material recently covered. However, I also used questions as a way of introducing and stimulating interest in a new topic, and to gauge how much students had remembered about a topic from their previous study. The PRS screen displays the number of the question being asked, the time allotted, and the number of chances each student has to answer. When a question is asked, the clock is 'started' and the time remaining in which to answer is shown. The lecturer can stop the clock at any time. As each handset is used to answer a question another cell on the screen changes colour.

The PRS system can be operated in two modes. In the anonymous mode, when students answer a question a cell on the screen changes colour and the number of the handset responding is displayed. If the handsets are linked to a file with student names, then when screen cells change colour they can also reveal the name of the student answering. The response from each handset can be shown on the screen or kept hidden. If it remains hidden from the audience, double clicking on a cell reveals the answer selected and the time taken to answer. Hence, by double clicking on the first cell to change colour it is possible to congratulate the first student to answer if they answer correctly.

The handsets allow multiple-choice questions with up to 10 answers. However, I only offered students 4 possible answers to limit the time spent on questions. The handsets have high- and low confidence buttons. When bar chart summaries of the results are displayed, the bars comprise different coloured segments indicating the proportions of students answering with different confidence levels.

For each lecture the computer keeps a record of the numbered handsets' responses when the PRS is in the anonymous mode, and records the responses of individual students when in the named mode. The saved information also includes the time taken by each handset to answer every question, the number of attempts made by a handset when each question is asked, and the confidence levels of answers.

The only disadvantage that I have encountered in using the PRS is that less material can be covered in lectures. However, I feel that this is more than compensated by my greater awareness concerning the amount of material students understood. The students rapidly accepted the PRS as a standard teaching tool, and did not seem tempted either to take the handsets away or to 'fiddle' with them during lectures.

5.2 Case Study 2: The use of lecture time for workshops

John Sloman, The University of the West of England

The level 1 Economic Principles module at the University of the West of England (UWE) is a year long 30-credit module. Students on other 30 credit modules on the programme have 2 lectures per week and 1 seminar (in a group of 20) per week. There are 240 students on the Economic Principles module, and if class contact were to follow the pattern of the other modules, this would mean having 12 weekly seminar groups. Total staff hours would be 14 hours per week.

The material that would be covered in seminars would be a mix of formal theory (such as constructing models and working through graphical and numerical problems) and the consideration of policy issues, cases and other more open-ended questions where there is room for discussion and debate.

The decision was taken several years ago to introduce a third type of class. This is a workshop. Workshops are for the full lecture group in a lecture theatre seating 310. They are taken by two members of staff. Students have 2 lectures per week, 1 workshop per week and 1 seminar per fortnight. Student class contact is thus 3½ hours per week (rather than 3) but staff hours are only 10 hours per week (rather than 14). Workshops are used for technical material or for questions where there is a clear right or wrong answer. Seminars are reserved for discussing policy issues, case studies, debates, small group work, etc.

Students are given 3 lecture hours per week on their timetable but are not told in advance which are lectures and which are workshops. They do know, however, that workshops are based on material covered in lectures.

When students arrive at a workshop, they pick up a problem sheet. This contains a series of questions: graphical, algebraic, numerical problems (set out in sections), multiple-choice questions, making lists, etc. There is room on the sheet for them to write their answers. The students work through one or two questions, discussing them with their neighbours as they do them. The lecturer then goes through the answers from the front. Then the students do another one or two questions, and so on.

The lecture theatre is tiered, and so the students are asked to leave one row free in every three. This allows the lecturers go round giving help to students if they are stuck. Although the workshop involves two (or three) members of staff, there only one needs to be an experienced lecturer. The others can be graduate teaching assistants (GTAs).

Workshops have proved very popular with students and a good medium for learning and applying basic economic concepts. They consistently score high 'satisfaction' ratings in student questionnaires. There are significant economies of scale in such classes and yet virtually nothing is lost by doing the workshop exercises in such classes rather than in groups of 20. In fact the gains can be substantial:

• Students enjoy the variety of having three different types of class.
• Seminars become very lively and can be much more problem- and issues-focused.
• The format makes efficient use of GTAs. They need a far lower level of teaching skills on the one-to-one basis in which they are helping students in workshops. In fact, it is almost a form of peer support; students like being helped by GTAs who were recently undergraduates themselves.
• The lecturer time released can be reallocated to extra office hours support (again this could be by GTAs) and support in an online environment, such as running a discussion board to answer follow-up questions to the lectures or workshops.
• Workshops can lead directly into extra practice work for students. At UWE, additional 'homework' questions are attached to the workshop sheet, again with space to write the answers. Students hand these in to seminars. As the questions can all be marked simply right or wrong, they are very quick to mark. Tutors do not write comments on the answers. Instead, they staple an answer sheet to the student's homework.

The frequency and total number of workshops that are feasible to run in a department depend on the nature of the module. On 20-credit one-semester modules, the workshops could be run weekly. On 20-credit year long courses, or 10 or 15-credit one-semester modules, the workshops could be organised on a fortnightly basis. Rather than having a whole hour devoted to a workshop, an alternative is to introduce workshop activity into lectures. If lecture hours are increased by 50%, then approximately one-third of each lecture could be devoted to workshop activity, without any reduction in the time for traditional lecturing. The mix of lecturing and workshop activity in each lecture hour could make for a very active learning experience for students.