By Dr David A. Alexander, School of Social & Political Sciences, University of Glasgow

The lecture need not be a passive experience for students – listening to the lecturer deliver a monologue, letting the information wash over them and retaining little. Active learning can be applied as readily in the lecture as in the seminar. Yet, while attention is often placed on training early career instructors to deliver an active experience in seminars, rarely do development processes cover active learning in lectures. Opportunities to practice are also often limited before the transition into a Lectureship position. There are, however, ways to approach this, promoting an early/initial acclimation to active learning in lectures. In our recent article (Alexander et al, 2024), on the developmental benefits of collaborative lecturing, we set out a novel exercise for acquiring experience of active learning in the lecture by working with colleagues at similar initial career stages.

The exercise explored was embedded in an introductory course, here at the University of Glasgow in the Politics and International Studies unit, containing around 500 first- and second-year students. Two early career instructors would develop and deliver a single lecture together, on exam preparation and how to approach revision, with active learning components included. This would often be a first or early experience of lecturing for those involved, and applying active learning here. Those involved included course tutors, post-doctoral instructors, teaching fellows and early career Lecturers. The exercise itself encompassed three stages: 1) coordination/planning of the lecture, and design of active learning exercises; 2) the collaborative delivery of the lecture; 3) a reflective session on the application of the active learning exercises. 

Each year, one instructor would act as mentor, having participated in the session as the mentee the previous year, being asked to return to support a new mentee to maintain institutional memory. The mentor guides and highlights the approaches to active learning in the lecture that could be adopted, alongside the general practicalities of delivering a lecture – as the mentee was usually asked to participate if they currently lacked a lecture delivery experience, alongside expressing a desire to acquire pedagogical experience/further skills development. 

Once the lecture commenced, the mentor and mentee would jointly deliver the lecture content, with the mentor supporting the mentees confidence – usually helping to avoid ‘deer in headlights’ moments – and typically delivering more complex elements to develop their own lecture experience further. 

After the lectures delivery the instructors would hold a reflective discussion on the success of the lecture and the active learning components utilised. The mentor would encourage the mentee to reflect on how they would attempt to apply active learning in the lecture in the future – e.g. when they would be asked to return as the mentor in the next session to assist their own potential first-time lecturer. 

Collaboration between colleagues at a similar early career stage did result in a less intimidating environment for those involved, to promote reflexivity on developing active learning practice in the lecture context. We discovered that working in collaboration, peer-to-peer, promotes acclimatation to the application of active learning for those involved, and a desire to develop the sophistication of this, from this key formative stage. This was particularly true for those colleagues involved from an international academic background. Active learning is not a universal practice across higher education internationally; in many systems the approach to lecturing is still predominantly didactic. This can mean that, when some colleagues or PhD students potentially enter a system where active learning is the expectation, quickly adapting to this environment can be jarring – and is often unsupported. Supporting development with a collaborative approach can ease this entry.

Key Points: 

• Opportunities to practice active learning in the large-scale lecture space are often limited/rare for early career instructors.
• Working with colleagues at a similar early career stage resulted in a conducive environment to promote reflexivity on active learning practice.
• Collaborative lecturing could help those who are unfamiliar with active learning in the lecture setting to acclimatise to its application.

Reference list/further reading

• Alexander, D. A., Brown, S. A. W., Wang, H., & Lundberg, T. C. (2024). An early-career lecturer and mentor walk into a lecture theatre… repeatedly: Developmental benefits of collaborative lecturing in political science. Politics, https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957241310240
• Buckingham LR, López-Hernández A, Strotmann B (2021) Learning by comparison: The benefits of co-teaching for university professors’ professional development. Frontiers in Education 6(1): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2021.776991
• Race P (2019) The Lecturer’s Toolkit: A Practical Guide to Assessment, Learning and Teaching. London: Routledge.