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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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):
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.