By Jack Prostko, Director, Faculty Development Center

Now that we have almost reached the midpoint of spring semester, instructors may want to check with students to discover what's working well in a course and what might be improved. Mid-semester evaluations can be much more useful than end-of-semester evaluations, which come too late for us to make improvements that benefit the students giving us feedback.

One of the most useful means of getting this feedback is to have a small group evaluation (SGE) performed -- essential a short focus group session which I run for any professors willing to sacrifice 20 minutes of class time. Students are divided into groups and asked to discuss the course and provide specific information on what is helping them learn material and what might be strengthened.

When I run these evaluations, students usually confirm an instructor's feelings about the class -- that some aspects are wonderful but that other things may not be working as planned. In particular, students often comment on what has helped them become engaged in the course, especially if it is a large lecture class. As various reports have shown (confirming what most of us already know), "the average student's attention span is between ten and twenty minutes" (Davis, p.99).

Lecturing for long periods of time allows us to cover a lot of material, but may be less effective in helping students learn than dividing the class period into segments of lecture followed by brief classroom activities. These occasional breaks reinforce learning by encouraging students to consolidate what they know and allowing them to identify what they do not understand.

Long PowerPoint lectures can be particularly troubling for students who may feel overwhelmed with the amount of material to digest. After dozens of slides of information, students can no longer retain -- let along apply -- every detail, no matter how significant they all may seem.

Professors here at UMBC use a variety of techniques to vary the structure of a lecture class, and student feedback shows that these teaching practices are quite effective. In brief, here are some examples of how long lectures can be packaged into segments with periods of class participation. After lecturing for 15 or 20 minutes, introduce:

*Short writing exercises. Instructors ask students to explain a principle or idea, or to apply information in a new setting. Such writing need not be collected or graded to be useful to students. You may even ask students to exchange papers or discuss their ideas in pairs.

*Problem-solving exercises. Choose a problem that can be handled in 5 to 10 minutes; students might discuss the problem with a neighbour or in a small group.

Pair activity or small group work. A popular cooperative learning technique is called Think-Pair-Share, in which students are asked to ponder a question briefly and discuss it with a partner; after this several pair or group responses are used as the basis for a short discussion led by the instructor.

*Games. Content from any course can be included in simple variations on familiar games (tic-tac-toe; bingo; jeopardy) to reinforce learning. Author Steve Sugar will discuss how to use games in teaching at a workshop sponsored by the Faculty Development Center and the Office of Information Technology on Tuesday March 18 from noon to 1 p.m. in the Commons, room 318. To register for the workshop, go to www.umbc.edu/brownbag.

Other professors organize more complex activities, such as role-plays, debates, case studies, or reports from teams working on outside projects. All of these are useful ways to supplement lecture with activities that reinforce learning -- and more information on all of them can be found at the Faculty Development Center.

And finally, consider having a small group evaluation run in your course; to do so, simply call me at ext. 5-1829 or e-mail me, prostko@umbc.edu. The information students provide can be very useful in making small changes that might have a great effect in the classroom.

Web Resources

Articles on "Interactive Lectures" available at the Network for Cooperative Learning, www.csudh.edu/SOE/cl_network/

Books Available at the Faculty Development Center:

Bean, John C. Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2001.

Davis, Barbara Gross. "Personalizing the Large Lecture Class," in Tools for Teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2001.

Foyle, Harvey C. (ed). Interactive Learning in the Higher Education Classroom: Cooperative, Collaborative, and Active Learning Strategies. Washington, DC: NEA, 1995.

Stanley, Christine A. and Porter, M. Erin. Engaging Large Classes: Strategies and Techniques for College Faculty. Bolton, MA: Anker, 2002.

Sugar, Steve. Games that Teach: Experiential Activities for Reinforcing Training. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, 1998.