Keep learners awake and engaged using interactive lecture
By Anil Jaising Published On March 27, 2023
As a trainer you want your learners to have
- Collaborative interdependence: learners work together and they cannot accomplish the task without working together.
- Individual accountability: As a participant in a group activity, learners are accountable for maximizing their own learning.
Sharon Bowman’s Training from the BACK of the Room book first introduced me to the two ideas and so I wanted this level of interaction for my every presentation and training.
One way to deliver new content to learners without slides is interactive lecture. Many of the trainers that I teach tend to use the interactive lecture because it helps them easily transition from a lecture with slides.
The writing is an explicit part of the lecture delivery while the content delivery is short usually between 5 to 8 minutes.
I use two techniques to deliver an interactive lecture
1. Interactive lecture using a graphic organizer
In the following YouTube video, I explain the Scrum workflow and encourage my learners to download and print the graphic organizer from https://bit.ly/3zeoexm. While I deliver my interactive lecture, learners are completing the graphic organizer.
2. Interactive lecture using a blank sheet of paper
In the four attributes of the product backlog and product backlog item I ask my learners to use a blank sheet of paper. I engage them to use the blank sheet of paper to capture the attributes while I share them with an interactive lecture.
Key benefits of an interactive lecture
- Keep learners awake and engaged.
- Learner’s are focused on the information in the lecture because they are focused on writing down the material
- Increase learner’s retention of the knowledge
- Learner’s takeaway their learning that they wrote on the graphic organizer or the blank sheet of paper
Principles used to engage the brain
- Shorter trumps longer
- Writing trumps reading
- Different trumps same
Additional resources:
https://conceptsandbeyond.com/how-to-build-consensus-as-a-facilitator-part-1-applying-inclusive-principles/
https://conceptsandbeyond.com/how-to-build-consensus-as-a-facilitator-part-2-creative-reframing/
https://conceptsandbeyond.com/how-to-build-consensus-as-a-facilitator-part-3-strengthening-good-ideas/
