Designing for engagement
A lecture that is a lengthy, one-way transmission of content is not something that inspires engagement, even when it might be well-aligned with ILOs. Just like any teaching session, the basis of planning a lecture is to break it into individual teaching and learning activities, and for each component consider:
- What the teacher is doing.
- What the students are doing.
- Why this is being done.
- How long each element will take.
| Teacher doing? | Students doing? | Why? (Rationale) | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
Presenting slides 3-8 (talking) | Listening. Taking notes. | Being introduced to "Basic Concept X". Situating Concept X in everyday life so students can appreciate its importance. | 10 minutes |
Monitoring and being available for questions or clarification. | Sharing their own examples of Basic Concept X in peer groups of 2-4. | Building understanding of how this concept is relevant to their everyday lives. | 5 minutes |
Facilitating as students share their examples | Reporting examples (around five volunteers required) | Provide further examples or show commonality of the same experiences to underscore importance of Concept X. | 5-7 minutes |
For lectures, there is usually the assumption that the presenter will be doing a high proportion of the talking. However, it is important to bear in mind that long stints of one-way transmission by the lecturer are not an effective learning approach for engagement and retention of content. Research (Bligh,1972) suggests that the effective learning capacity of an audience starts to fall away dramatically after roughly 15 minutes of uninterrupted speaking by a lecturer. By the end of an hour, this capacity for learning is almost negligible. The behavioural signs of disengagement can become more obvious as a lecture continues uninterrupted, but it is important to realise that the cognitive side is also declining markedly.
Evidence from classroom observation studies shows that lecturers often underestimate how much of the time they spend talking and overestimate how interactive their teaching is (Sheridan and Smith, 2020). A practical, evidence-based guideline is that no more than about one-third to one-half of a one-hour lecture should consist of uninterrupted lecturer talk. The remaining time is best used for activities such as think–pair–share, short problem-solving tasks, polling, or guided discussion, which re-engage attention and deepen understanding. In other words, concise, purposeful explanation punctuated by interactive elements is likely to produce far better learning outcomes than continuous talk, however clearly presented and connected to the ILOs.
The positive news is that this learning capacity can be revived with a short break away from one-way information transmission. If the lecture can be designed in chunks that allows the audience to vary what they are doing aside from passive listening, this will assist in knowledge assimilation and retention. Even simple activities such as a think-pair-share with those around them will enable a re-set of the effective learning capacity once the lecturing continues. Interactive problem-solving or skill practice tasks also allow students to consolidate their learning. This also promotes active learning. For example, when students are required to answer questions that are related to the concepts they have been learning about, it can boost cognitive engagement by encouraging them to draw on their own understanding of key ideas (Crawford & Parsell, 2025)’. Different formats of information can also assist, such as video clips, visual aids or demonstrations.
Further reinforcing the need for breaks and student activity in the lecture is an established link between information transmission/teacher focused methods and students adopting ‘surface approaches’ towards their learning (Prosser and Trigwell (2020). Conversely, when the teacher fosters conceptual change and student focused approaches, deeper learning attitudes prevail. That is to say, the Cognitive and Affect aspects of engagement are activated.
A deep approach focuses on understanding the meaning and underlying concepts of information, while a surface approach primarily focuses on memorizing facts to complete a task, often with the goal of simply passing an assessment
These interstitial tasks can also serve as the basis for micro assessment and feedback. Note that this feedback will ideally be two-way: the students checking their progress and the lecturer gaining an idea where any gaps in understanding might be. Quizzes are one way of doing this. Anonymous polls can also be useful, asking students to self-assess their understanding and giving the lecturer an idea of what concepts needs greater expansion, perhaps in a future session.
Not every quiz needs to be difficult or produce a public ranking. Such approaches can discourage students who are still grappling with the material and may push others toward surface learning, where the goal becomes maximising scores rather than developing understanding. In contrast, a short, five-question quiz (designed so that all students can achieve full marks with some thought) can be just as valuable for prompting reflection on prior content as a more complex, speed-based activity like Kahoot.
Offering flexible options for participation, such as allowing both verbal and written responses during discussions or Q&A sessions, assists in building an inclusive environment. This approach accommodates students who may feel more comfortable expressing themselves in writing or who might require additional time to formulate their thoughts. Anonymous channels of interaction can also assist, as do low-stakes quizzes or comprehension checks.
Timing
Being careful not to cram too much content into any one lecture is a common pitfall. Often lecturers want to teach everything they know about a topic, usually in an effort to make sure they are doing their best for students. However, not everything the presenter knows was ever gleaned from a single lecture, and rabbit holes that lead away from the ILOs are unhelpful for students looking to situate the lecture content in their learning progress. Too much content leads to rushed or unfinished lectures, which is frustrating for students, who may feel that they have ‘missed out’ on something important, or not had the chance to digest the content.
Including any extra activities requires an idea of their timing when you are planning the lecture. Be realistic; most things will take longer than you think, so design for that. It is critical not to view this time as ‘losing’ content from your lecture: discussion and questions are valuable aspects of engagement, and the focus should be on what your students are actually learning, not how much they are being told.
Including any extra activities requires an idea of their timing when you are planning the lecture. Be realistic; most things will take longer than you think, so design for that. It is critical not to view this time as ‘losing’ content from your lecture: discussion and questions are valuable aspects of engagement, and the focus should be on what your students are actually learning, not how much they are being told.
Delivery
The delivery of lectures will incorporate aspects such as voice, content and supporting technologies. All of these can be employed to foster engagement (Ryan et al., 2021).
-
Often we think about what we are going to say and do not consider how we are going to say it. Voice is a vital tool in lecturing, and the best slides and content can be undermined by vocal elements that hinder clarity and engagement. Speaking too fast, whether through nerves or time pressure, can overwhelm listeners and cause them to ‘give up’ trying to absorb the content.
A useful exercise can be timing your words per minute when you are speaking. (For example, reading a long passage for one minute and then counting how far you got into it. For best clarity you should be aiming for around 140-150 words per minute (wpm), though if you are delivering very dense, new technical content, slightly slower is preferable. As a way of comparison, President Obama generally spoke at about 100-120 wpm during his speeches. Casual conversation between friends will run at about 150-170 wpm. A Melbourne Cup race caller will hit between 250-300 wpm. An American livestock auctioneer will get up to 450 wpm, though a lot of this is filler, nonsense syllables.
The volume of your voice is another aspect to consider. If students are straining to hear you, it will impact their engagement. Teaching spaces and technology can be a factor in whether your voice is too low or indistinct to be heard. Check regularly with students to see if they can hear your voice and make adjustments accordingly. Even if you think your natural voice is loud enough, make use of available microphones, as this may assist students with hearing difficulties or those listening online. Keep your face to the class to support lip reading. -
In addition to the factors of planning and aligning your content (above), the material you use to support your lecture will also play a part in engaging your audience. For most lectures, there will be some slides or related visual material to reinforce the learning process.
Slides should be there to support, not replace, the lecturer! They should also be there to serve the students, not the presenter. If the slides are a dense, distracting and overwhelming avalanche of information, the audience will not be engaging with the verbal content, as they struggle to keep across what is going up on the screen. Similarly, if the audience could gain the required information simply by reading all the slides at their leisure, then the purpose of the lecture format is doubtful. Consider too that every time a new slide appears on the screen, attention instantly shifts away from the speaker as the audience start to read the slide.
Your visual elements will play a significant role in lecture engagement, so they must also be designed with inclusivity in mind. Utilising clear, high-contrast visuals and easily legible captions on slides aids comprehension for all learners. (As a general rule, if you need to squint to read your slides on your own PC screen from more than a metre away, your audience will also struggle, even on a big screen.)
Try using the SLIDE Rule to help with building a presentation that is more engaging or at least keeps the focus on the speaker.S Single Idea Keep to one core idea or piece of information per slide. Don’t try to say everything about that idea on the one slide. Say what matters most. L Less is more Keep the total number of slides down and the amount of information on those slides brief. An intriguing or evocative picture can help support your oral explanation better than a slide of dense text. Try to keep below 20-25 words in total on a slide. I Intent Each slide should have a purpose for being included and be aligned with the ILOs. Each element of each slide should similarly have a reason for being there. (“Here’s another thing that kind of relates to the topic” is not a good enough reason to be included.) D Design Design for clarity, not density. Think of your slides as a billboard, rather than a research poster. Font sizes, diagrams and data all need to be clearly legible without the audience squinting. This is even more important if your recorded presentation is being viewed on a device. As a general rule, font sizes of <18 are to be avoided. Complex diagrams with tiny labels are also not best delivered as slides. Use clear, high contrast text and visuals, which also assist with inclusivity. E Expand The content in the slides is there for you to expand on. Not for you to read out to the audience. Use bullet points (no more than five words per point) to provide the skeleton of the points that you will then explain. -
Aside from slides, a variety of technologies can be employed to build engagement in lectures. Tools that allow student responses and collaboration are of particular value. Apps such as polls, surveys and collective boards not only promote active participation, but also provide immediate feedback, allowing lecturers to gauge student understanding and adjust their teaching accordingly (Ryan et al. 2021). Platforms such as shared documents, virtual whiteboards, or discussion forums enable students to work together on projects or solve problems collectively, even in large lecture settings. These interactive tasks transform that one-way lecture dynamic into multi-way conversations that can pique student interest whilst improving retention of key information and promoting critical thinking.
Teaching & Learning Innovation has a list of supported learning technologies as well as workshops and training on a range of topics and tech.
The use of relevant video, audio or multimedia content can be immensely beneficial in breaking up those periods of one-way lecturing, or getting students to think more broadly about a topic (Ryan et al., 2021). Such material can help illustrate complex ideas, provide real-world context, and also create engagement for those with different approaches to learning. Balance is key to this, since a lecture that is just a string of video clips brings into question its purpose.
Lastly, leveraging the Canvas LMS to provide supplementary materials offers a support for extending learning outside the lecture. Additional resources, practice exercises, extended readings, and collaborative digital spaces can encourage deeper exploration of lecture topics whilst accommodating various paces of learning. These tasks and materials should still be aligned with the subject’s ILOs and aim to capture engagement created during lectures and support students’ self-directed learning.