Lecturing resources

Selected by Rhona Sharpe, OCSLD, Oxford Brookes University

What’s the purpose of lectures?

  1. ‘Introduction for Lecturers New to Teaching in Higher Education’ An OER Course Pack from the Staff Development Centre at the University of Leicester. Session 3: ingredients of effective large-group teaching, provokes some self-reflection on what you want to achieve in your lectures. A good place to start. http://www2.le.ac.uk/projects/oer/oers/staffdev/introduction-for-lecturers-new-to-teaching-in-higher-education
  2. Images of lecturing from medieval times to present day. What has changed over time? e.g.
  3. ‘Improve your lecturing’. An online module for clinical educators from the London Deanery. You can read summaries of the topic and work through the suggested learning activities at http://www.faculty.londondeanery.ac.uk/e-learning/improve-your-lecturing, starting with ‘Why lecture?’

How effective are lectures?

  1. The Open University has made available some of its course materials in its OpenLearn Labspace at labspace.open.ac.uk. Setting up an OpenLearn account gives you access to LearningSpace forums and free courses (for example, you can enroll on the unit H800: Repurposing open educational content). The Labspace includes the module that Graham Gibbs wrote on lecturing while he was at the OU. Copyrighted materials has been removed but it is still worth a read at http://labspace.open.ac.uk/file.php/5196/H850_pk5p2.pdf.  Ideally have Donald Bligh’s book ‘What’s the use of lectures’ alongside you as you work through Graham’s notes.
  2. ‘Don’t lecture me’ is Donald Clark’s controversial keynote to the Association for Learning Technology Conference in 2010. On YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbl-xXF8NPY Worth watching all the way through to the end.
  3. Prince, M. (2004) Does active learning work? A review of the research. Journal of Engineering Education, 93(3), 223-231. http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/Papers/Prince_AL.pdf . This review article defines the core elements of active learning as introducing activities into the traditional lecture and promoting student engagement. It reviews empirical studies which have attempted to show the effects of engaging students in such activities. Do they work?

What can we do to improve lectures?

  1. A 15-minute video offering practical suggestions for facilitating learning in large classes, featuring Graham Gibbs, produced by the Centre for Learning and Teaching at Dalhousie University. http://videtis.ucis.dal.ca/clt/all_fcp.mov
  2. ‘Creating Accessible Lectures’ is one of series of booklets created by the SHEFCE fund Teachability project at University of Strathclyde. See  http://www.teachability.strath.ac.uk/
  3. David Baume’s ‘First Words on Teaching and Learning’ at http://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/ocsld/firstwords/fw1con.html. Don’t be put off by the old styling of these web pages. They still contain excellent advice for the very new lecturer from OCSLD including how to plan and make a presentation and give presentations which explain clearly and include opportunities for active learning.
  4. Active collaborative learning in engineering at the University of Strathclyde. A video case study on using clickers to engage students, from the JISC Innovative Practice with E-learning guide at http://elearning.ac.uk/innoprac/practitioner/strathclyde.html
  5. The use of activities in lectures by Dr Stuart Cooper; Matt Davies from Aston University. Available from the Jorum OER Repository at http://dspace.jorum.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/15380. Some fairly introductory thoughts on the values of activities in lectures.
  6. ‘Lecturing for learning’ a series of short (3-7 minute) presentations given by Tom Angelo, University of Sydney, including: