Lectures in higher education often address audiences that consist of over one hundred students. In this setting, it is arguably difficult to take into account individual interests of each participant. This may result in low motivation, decreased learning outcomes as well as an overall low effectiveness of lectures. Self-determination theory…

Over the past two decades, postsecondary classrooms have been shifting from passive to active learning methods. This shift has been supported by behavior analysis, which has a rich history of strategies that promote active student responding and engagement. One behavior analytic strategy is interteaching, whereby students discuss questions based…

Universities in the U.S. typically offer to teach introductory engineering courses in large classes to tackle the increase in undergraduate engineering enrolment and to save on cost of teaching. Previous studies done on traditionally taught large classes have shown the negative effects it has on students and faculty. Many institutions use online…

Seminar series can address cutting-edge topics not covered in existing courses, but it is time-consuming for interaction between students in large-enrolled seminars. To promote student interaction without compromising course goals, a large blended seminar series course was designed by combining traditional offline lectures and online discussions…

The concept of active learning as a superior mode of instruction has recently received great attention in the education research literature. It holds promise of steering students away from rote memorization towards higher order thinking (as defined by Bloom's taxonomy revised). However, few studies focus on student perceptions of higher order…

Passive learning environments to teach programming concepts, especially in large lecture classes, hinder students' motivation, performance and may adversely affect their achievement goals. The study presents the use of two instructional strategies, teamwork, and reflective thinking, using educational technologies introduced in a class of 120…

In engaging lectures, also referred to as broken or interactive lectures, students are given short periods of lecture followed by "breaks" that can consist of 1-min papers, problem sets, brainstorming sessions, or open discussion. While many studies have shown positive effects when engaging lectures are used in undergraduate settings,…

As good teachers may have great influence on positive outcomes of students, educational systems should provide feedback about their professional performances in any way. Otherwise, not only do teachers fail but the system fails. It is claimed that students have some reasons while they are evaluating the lecture and teaching. This study was…

Shares some surprising results from a business communication program's recent experiment in using a large lecture format to teach an upper-division business communication course: approximately 90-95% of the students liked the large lecture format, and the quality of their communication deliverables was as good as that produced by students who took…

The results of a three-year project introducing small-group experiential learning techniques into a traditionally structured first-year lecture course are presented. Ways to introduce the techniques into large classes with no increase in resources are discussed. (MSE)

A study compared the effectiveness of two methods (medium-size class instruction and large lectures with tutorial sessions) for teaching mathematics and statistics to first-year business students. Students and teachers overwhelmingly preferred the medium-size class method, which produced higher exam scores but had no significant effect on…