R3 2.6 April 1, 2024 A New Look at an Old Question: Does Active Learning Beat Lecture?
Not on its own, but when it’s timed in the right way, the combination of the two is best of all
In this issue, we take a look at a new article on a question that continues to bubble up in pedagogy debates: whether active learning really should replace lecture altogether, and if not, what type of mixed approach is best. Few today are advocating for lecture-only course designs; this isn’t to say that such courses aren’t out there, but rather, that most instructors doing intentionally designed pedagogy are well aware that minimizing lecture is the trend of the day.
That said, there does seem to be a particularly noticeable gap between ideal and practice when it comes to active learning. Leaders in the field continue to sing its praises even as students report that lecture is the main teaching method that they encounter day in and day out. This is where today’s article could help illuminate a way forward, with new empirical results that directly support a combination approach. Perhaps by offering models of how alternating between the two methods can work well in a typical STEM class, it will help break through the gridlock that tends to build up between active-learning evangelists and lecture-loving traditionalists.
One last note to regular readers of the R3 Newsletter: Many thanks for your patience with this overdue issue! A sudden health crisis sidelined me at a bad time, and I’m still in catchup mode. Be well, everyone, and I hope that you are prioritizing your own health and well-being as the academic calendar enters yet another stressful season for many.
On to our article!
Citation:
Martella, A. M., Schneider, D. W., O’Day, G. M., & Karpicke, J. D. (2024). Investigating the intensity and integration of active learning and lecture. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. Advance online publication.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1037/mac0000160
Paywall or Open:
Paywall
Summary:
The study explored how variations in active learning intensity (present vs. absent) and its integration with lectures (alternated in small intervals or blocked in one larger interval) influence students' acquisition of science content. Across two experiments, it compared effectiveness of pure lecture, pure active learning, and a blend of both in teaching biological taxonomies. Experiment 1 revealed that participants exposed to the content via lecture alone outperformed those exposed via active learning alone. Experiment 2 compared lecture-only presentation to a mixture of lecture and active learning, either interspersed in shorter sessions or in separate, longer blocks. The findings highlighted that an interspersed approach, where lectures and active learning activities are interspersed, significantly enhanced learning outcomes over the blocked combination or pure lecture.
Research Questions (excerpted from the article):
Study 1:
“1. Primary research question: Does the intensity of active learning impact participants’ learning of science content?
2. Exploratory Research Question 1: Does the intensity of active learning impact how much participants feel they learned from the lesson?
3. Exploratory Research Question 2: Does the intensity of active learning impact how much participants enjoyed the lesson?”
Study 2:
“1. Primary research question: Does the intensity and integration of active learning and lecture impact participants’ learning of science content?
2. Exploratory Research Question 1: Does the intensity and integration of active learning and lecture impact how much participants feel they learned from the lesson?
3. Exploratory Research Question 2: Does the intensity and integration of active learning and lecture impact how much participants enjoyed the lesson?”
Sample:
Students at a large Midwestern university recruited from introductory psychology courses; N = 146 in Study 1 and 219 in Study 2
Method/Design:
Experiment 1: Participants were randomly assigned to either a pure lecture condition or an active learning condition. All participants received instruction on the same content—biological taxonomies, including classifications based on common name, species, order, and phylum.
Pure Lecture Condition: Participants viewed an 18-minute recorded lecture detailing the taxonomic associations. The lecture condition included a review phase.
Active Learning Condition: Participants engaged with the content through an 18-minute matching activity designed to promote active learning without direct instruction. The activity was structured to provide immediate feedback on participants' responses to facilitate engagement and learning.
Outcome Measures: The main outcome measure was a posttest with multiple-choice questions over the content. This assessment included verbatim factual questions and inference questions. Participants were also asked to rate their overall enjoyment of the lesson as well as their “judgment of learning” (JOL; meaning how well they felt they learned the material)
Experiment 2: Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: pure lecture, lecture combined with active learning in an interspersed format, or lecture combined with active learning in a blocked format.
Pure lecture Condition: Participants viewed the same 18-minute lecture as in Experiment 1.
Interspersed Condition: Participants alternated between brief lecture segments and active learning tasks, each focusing on specific taxonomic relationships.
Blocked Condition: Participants first watched the complete lecture segment and then engaged in the active learning task.
Outcome Measures: As with Experiment 1, learning was assessed through a posttest that included both verbatim and inference multiple-choice questions to evaluate direct recall and application of the taught content. The enjoyment question was modified for those in the interspersed and blocked conditions to separately address enjoyment of the lecture, the activity, and the combination of both.
Key Findings:
In Experiment 1, participants in the pure lecture condition outperformed those in the active learning condition on both types of question (verbatim/factual and inference). Enjoyment and judgment of learning ratings were similar across conditions. In Experiment 2, participants in the interspersed condition outperformed those in the blocked and pure lecture conditions on both question types. Enjoyment ratings were lower in the pure lecture compared with the other conditions, and judgment of learning ratings were lower in the pure lecture compared to the other conditions.
Choice Quote from the Article:
Should we teach college courses using lecture or active learning? Perhaps it is a matter of both. In two experiments, we systematically studied the effects of different intensities of active learning and ways to integrate active learning and lecture to determine which maximized student learning of science content. Our findings suggest that (a) a pure lecture intervention may encourage greater student learning of science content than a pure active learning intervention, and (b) interspersing equal amounts of lecture and active learning may encourage greater student learning of science content than blocking the instructional modes or having lecture alone.
Why it Matters:
There are some surprising results here in light of the ongoing push for active learning. This was especially the case for Experiment 1, which pitted an all-lecture design against an all-active-learning one. Students learned more and even enjoyed the experience about the same amount for the all-lecture condition. The authors argue that the surprising under-performance of the active learning activity wasn’t because it was low quality or inherently ineffective, given that in Experiment 2, that same activity produced great results when interspersed with lecture. It’s in this section of the article that things get interesting, with results demonstrating that relatively short segments of lecture interspersed with activities is clearly the way to go (at least if the main goal is to promote content retention and enjoyment).
It is refreshing to see a meticulously designed study that directly addresses the topic in a way that goes beyond the simplistic, either/or strain of argument that tends to creep into this space. Active learning versus lecture is presented here less as a debate between sides than a way to hone and refine interactive pedagogy, to take something that most of us would now agree is a solid approach and fine-tune it in a systematic way. It reminds me of the ways in which interactive-lecture advocate Todd Zakrajsek has addressed the topic (definitely check out his work in the references below if you’d like to get more of his unique perspective on lectures).
Following in this vein, the article gives a thoughtful review of the major questions and findings on the two approaches – again emphasizing not the controversy about whether lecture should exist, but deeper conceptual issues underlying different approaches. It offers an especially useful description contrasting the benefits of active learning and lecture, which notably goes beyond the superficial reasoning one sometimes sees (“lecture transmits information efficiently” / “active learning engages students”). Instead, there’s consideration of factors including cognitive load, likelihood of drawing incorrect conclusions about the material, and opportunities to provide feedback during critical early stages of knowledge construction and encoding.
All of this aligns nicely with what many thoughtful instructors have concluded for themselves based on their own experiences - that both/and, not either/or, is the best approach to the question of lecture versus active learning. This article adds to that by revealing exactly what sort of alternation or interspersing scheme is likely to lead to the most learning (at least, learning construed as retention of main concepts). For my own part, I’ll remain an advocate for active learning, and for the idea that every faculty member should hone their skill in developing and facilitating these kinds of activities. But I do agree that both approaches should be part of most instructors’ pedagogical skill sets.
Most Relevant For:
Instructional designers; STEM faculty
Limitations, Caveats, and Nagging Questions:
Especially early on in the article, there is fairly heavy emphasis on multimedia theory (Mayer, 2011, 2021). If you want to get the most out of the introduction/literature review, it’s important to have a general understanding of this framework before diving in.
As with many similar articles, the main outcome measure is factual retention, and the subject area is a fairly narrow (but not inappropriate) one. Even so, it’s not the case that all of the measurements were simple factual questions; there were more conceptual-style “inference” questions as well, and the overall trends in the data seemed to apply to both question types. This narrow focus is helpful from a study design perspective, as it helps make the study conditions more controlled and measurement of the outcomes more straightforward. However, you’d want to use caution in applying this work directly to, for example, a writing-intensive course or one where application was more important than knowledge acquisition.
These results echo, but do not exactly duplicate, a similar pattern found for presentation of materials – blocked versus massed practice in interleaving, and spaced versus massed practice in distributed practice. These phenomena may share some common roots, but it’s important to keep in mind that they are still distinct. Attention, in particular, might play a bigger role in the interspersing effect described in the article, based on the authors’ speculation that quicker alternations among activities might help prevent mind wandering and promote focus.
Finally, another important distinction is that all of the learning activities and presentations were strictly online, completed individually and at a time of the participants’ choosing. This design makes sense given that it ensured that all participants got an identical experience as far as the lecture and activity, but it’s not an exact analogue of a typical face-to-face class meeting. Notably as well, the social component that’s often a part of active learning is absent, as students completed the activities on their own.
If you liked this article, you might also appreciate:
Deslauriers, L., McCarty, L. S., Miller, K., Callaghan, K., & Kestin, G. (2019). Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116(39), 19251– 19257. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1821936116
Freeman, S., Eddy, S. L., McDonough, M., Smith, M. K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H., & Wenderoth, M. P. (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(23), 8410–8415. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1319030111
Harrington, C., & Zakrajsek, T. (2017). Dynamic lecturing: Research-based strategies to enhance lecturing effectiveness. Stylus.
Jakobsen, K. V., & Daniel, D. B. (2019). Evidence-inspired choices for teachers: Team-based learning and interactive lecture. Teaching of Psychology, 46(4), 284-289. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628319872411
Mayer, R. E. (2011). Applying the science of learning. Pearson/Merrill/ Prentice Hall.
Mayer, R. E. (2021). Multimedia learning (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Zakrajsek, T. (2018). Reframing the lecture versus active learning debate: Suggestions for a new way forward. Education in the Health Professions, 1(1), 1–3. https://doi.org/10.4103/EHP.EHP_14_18
File under: active learning; interactive lecture; STEM teaching and learning