The Interactive Lecture: An Oxymoron?

Research has shown consistently that traditional lecture methods in which professors talk and students listen dominate college and university classrooms. Nevertheless, for at least sixty years, and particularly during the current standards movement in education, there has been considerable effort in identifying more effective methods and procedures to enhance learning (Tyler, 1949; Hake, 1998; Robinson & Maceli, 2000; Webb, 2003; Morton, 2007).

In the 1940’s, Tyler (1949) noted that learning takes place through the active behavior of the student. According to Tyler, it is not what the teacher does, but through what the student does that learning takes place. That said, (Mazur, 2009) suggested that a modification of traditional lectures is one way to incorporate active learning in the classroom. For example, if a faculty member allows students to consolidate their notes by pausing three times for two minutes each during a 60-minute lecture, students will learn much more information (Silverthorn, 2006).

Several alternatives to the lecture format not only increase student achievement but also raise levels of student engagement in the learning activity. For example, the feedback lecture consists of two mini-lectures separated by a small-group study session built around a study guide. In the guided lecture, students listen to a 20- to 30-minute presentation without taking notes, followed by their writing for five minutes about what they remember, and then spending the remainder of the class period in small groups clarifying and elaborating the material. Morton (2007) calls the latter third of the guided lecture the “active review.” Students can also become involved during a lecture by completing short, un-graded exercises followed by class discussion.

Clearly, there are a variety of teaching methods and styles that can be used in mathematics classrooms. They range from mostly interactive to mostly lecture. Information gathered from students can provide incite into the degree to which teaching styles are interactive and the effect of those styles on their learning. The purpose of this study was three-fold: 

(1) to determine if there were differences in students’ perceptions of the amount of interaction that occurred between themselves and their teachers across sections of a pre-calculus course;

 (2) to report on the type of teaching style students experienced in their last mathematics course, and the type of teaching style students would prefer in the next mathematics course if they were to enroll in one in the future; and 

(3) to examine the relationship between students’ perceptions of the amount of interaction in the teaching style of their pre-calculus course and the extent to which that teaching style helped them understand concepts taught in the course.