Interactive Ways of Teaching
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The first thing to realize about interactive teaching is that it is NOT something new or mysterious. If you are a teacher and you ask questions in class, assign and check homework, or hold class or group discussions, then you already teach interactively. Basically then (in my book), interactive teaching is just giving students something to do, getting back what they have done, and then assimilating it yourself, so that you can decide what would be best to do next.

But, almost all teachers do these things, so is there more to it? To answer this question, one has to step away from teaching and think about learning. Over the last twenty years, the field of cognitive science has taught us a lot about how people learn. A central principle that has been generally accepted is that everything we learn, we "construct" for ourselves. That is, any outside agent is essentially powerless to have a direct effect on what we learn. If our brain does not do it itself, - that is, take in information, look for connections, interpret and make sense of it, - no outside force will have any effect. This does not mean that the effort has to be expressly voluntary and conscious on our parts. Our brains take-in information and operate continuously on many kinds of levels, only some of which are consciously directed. But, conscious or not, the important thing to understand is that it is our brains that are doing the learning, and that this process is only indirectly related to the teacher and the teaching. 
For example, even the most lucid and brilliant exposition of a subject by a teacher in a lecture, may result in limited learning if the students' brains do not do the necessary work to process it. There are several possible causes why students' learning may fall short of expectations in such a situation. Theymay,

• not understand a crucial concept partway into the lecture and so what follows is unintelligible, 
• be missing prior information or not have a good understanding of what went before, so the conceptual structures on which the lecture is based are absent,
• lack the interest, motivation, or desire to expend the mental effort to follow the presentation, understand the arguments, make sense of the positions, and validate the inferences.

However, whatever the cause, without interacting with the students (in the simplest case by asking questions), a teacher has no way to know if his/her efforts to explain the topic were successful. 
This brings me to the first of (what I believe are) three distinct reasons for interactive teaching. It is an attempt to see what actually exists in the brains of your students. This is the "summative" aspect. It is the easiest aspect to understand and it is well described in the literature. But, it is far from being the only perspective! The second reason is "formative", where the teacher aims through the assigned task to direct students' mental processing along an appropriate path in "concept-space". The intent is that, as students think through the issues necessary in traversing the path, the resulting mental construction that is developed in the student's head will possess those properties that the teacher is trying to teach. As Socrates discovered, a good question can accomplish this result better than, just telling the answer.

The third may be termed "motivational". Learning is hard work, and an injection of motivation at the right moment can make all the difference. One motivating factor provided by the interactive teacher is the requirement of a response to a live classroom task. This serves to jolt the student into action, to get his brain off the couch, so to speak. Additional more subtle and pleasant events follow immediately capitalizing on the momentum created by this initial burst. One of these is a result of our human social tendencies. When teachers ask students to work together in small groups to solve a problem, a discussion ensues that not only serves in itself to build more robust knowledge structures, but also to motivate. The anticipation of immediate feedback in the form of reaction from their peers, or from the teacher is a very strong motivator. If it is not embarrassing or threatening, students want to know desperately whether their understanding is progressing or just drifting aimlessly in concept space. Knowing that they are not allowed to drift too far off track provides tremendous energy to continue.

Ten Ideas for Interactive Teaching

While lecturing tends to be the easiest form of instruction, studies show that students absorb the least amount of information that way.

Interactive teaching methods are an effective way to connect with a generation of students used to consistent stimulation—and education professor Kevin Yee has some advice for how teachers can make their lessons more interactive.

“Don’t be afraid to experiment,” said Yee, a professor at the University of Central Florida and assistant director of the university’s Karen L. Smith Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning.

Yee is the author of “Interactive Techniques,” a collection of more than 100 teaching strategies—compiled from different sources—that aim to energize students and engage them in lessons. “Some of the techniques look and feel like they might have a different tone to them than your usual mannerisms in class, but it can pay dividends to almost adopt a new teaching persona when trying some of these out,” he said.

He cautioned teachers not to fear new methods because of possible failure: “I think it’s also OK if something is attempted and it doesn’t work. It’s OK to just be up front with the students and say, ‘Well no, this experiment didn’t work—let’s move on.’”

Here are 10 examples of the techniques that Yee has listed. Some involve technology, while others are very low-tech.

“These techniques are often perceived as ‘fun,’ yet they are frequently more effective than lectures at enabling student learning,” Yee’s paper states. “Not all techniques listed here will have universal appeal, with factors such as your teaching style and personality influencing which choices may be right for you.”

Follow the Leader: Appoint one student as tweeting “chairperson,” and have that student be responsible for posting the most important concepts discussed in the day’s class on Twitter. Have other students follow the Twitter feed and “retweet” any discussions or disagreements.

Using social networks can be a great way for students to feel connected to their classroom environments; Twitter is one social networking tool that is underused in terms of its learning possibilities, and having a leader responsible for broadcasting the main ideas in a classroom discussion will help increase active listening. Teachers can switch the Twitter leader each week or each day, depending on class size.

Total Physical Response (TPR): Research shows that when physical activity is included in classroom settings, students retain more information. For a quick sitting break, have students stand up and move to one side of the room to indicate their responses to a question. Instead of using this as a right-or-wrong answer activity, this exercise seems best suited for opinion-based responses. Students can see the differing perspectives of their classmates, which then can lead to debate and discussion.

One Word: If it seems a lecture is the only way to discuss a topic, preface it by telling students that at the end of the day’s lesson, they must write down a single word they believe best represents the lesson. Then, they can expand on why they chose that word with a separate paragraph. This will force active listening during the class period, as students will need to be able to condense an entire lesson into the essence of its idea.

Another idea is to ask students to write a slogan-like bumper sticker to illustrate a particular concept from the lecture—forcing them to sum up the entire class period in one sentence.

Opposite Arguments: Pair students up who disagree about an answer to an opinion question. Have them debate, representing the side they originally believed to be wrong. Having students examine an opinion contrary to their own will force them to think critically about arguments on both sides and will lead to a broader understanding of the topic under discussion.

Historically Correct: After watching a film on a topic discussed in class, have students answer what the movie portrayed accurately and which points it dramatized or glossed over. While this technique has a more obvious application for historical movies such as JFK, Schindler’s List, or Elizabeth, it also can be used to examine biases in documentary films or other dramatizations.

Another option is to divide students into groups and have them come up with examples on their own of movies that made use of an idea or event covered in class—and then try to find at least one example of how the film got it right and one of how the film got it wrong.

Test Tournament: Divide the class into at least two groups and announce a competition for most points on a practice test. Let students study a topic together and then give your quiz, tallying points. After each round, let students study the next topic together before quizzing again. The points should be carried over from round to round. “The student impulse for competition will focus their engagement onto the material itself,” the paper states.

YouTube Video Quizzes: Using the annotations feature on YouTube (which allows for text boxes), create a multiple-choice quiz with different video responses based on how the student answers. Students answer by clicking on a hyperlinked option in the annotation box, and the link takes them to a video response. This will require filming a response for incorrect answers (“This answer is wrong because…”) as well as correct answers. Teachers could use this as a “question of the day” exercise or put together longer pieces for a test format.

Electronic Role Playing: Students create their own blogs and write diary-style entries while role-playing as someone central to the content being discussed.

Puzzle Pieces: Classes are sectioned into different teams, each with a separate goal to accomplish during the period. At the end of planning, the teams come back together and teach the other teams about the topic they researched. Another option is to remix the teams by including one “expert” on a different topic within each team, who then has to teach his or her new group. When students know they will be responsible for teaching their friends, they are more likely to go into greater depth in their own research.

Pop Culture Statistics: Instead of using abstract numbers to interest students in lectures, switch word problems with current events. For example, illustrate a math concept with a topic currently popular, such as, “What percentage of the time do Jersey Shore cast members spend at the gym?” Students will respond more enthusiastically when presented with a topic they identify with, rather than generalized ideas.

Yee is currently working on assembling a list of interactive techniques geared toward online instruction.

“If you’re teaching in a fully electronic environment and you don’t see the students face to face, you have to think about how does the practice translate to not only a digital environment, but an asynchronous environment where they have to do it at different times,” he said.

Engage Students with Lectures

The engaging lecture can be a rewarding experience for our students. Lectures that open up a window on the teachers mind or relate exciting research experiences can be highly motivating.

To keep students engaged you can build variety into your delivery by “chunking” the class into sections of around 15 minutes. Use a shift in energy, change the focus, change the stimulus, or change the means of delivery.

• Include music, visuals, pictures, quotes, and stories to tap into students’ emotions
• Show a short video clip to relate the material to the real world
• Move to a different part of the room
• Use electronic devices to ask students to reflect on what has been said in the last 15 minutes
• Use clickers to check for common misconceptions
• Ask students to talk to the person next to them to tell them what they have learned in the last 15 minutes
• Bring in a guest speaker, either physically or virtually

When planning an engaging lecture, ask yourself:  “And what will my students be doing?”  Consider how the students will be involved in their learning and what you can do to facilitate the best learning.

Engage Students with Activities

You, as the expert, can design activities to help students think more critically about the content. This can be achieved inside the classroom while you are there to facilitate discussion and correct misconceptions. Activities can help the students link disparate pieces of information together, scaffold the skills and concepts they need to construct knowledge, facilitate and guide questions, and link the knowledge to its application in the outside world.  Havestudents:

• Brainstorm an idea at the beginning of the class before you present the material, then debrief and the end of class
• Fill in instructor-prepared system charts using the information presented
• Develop a matrix of key concepts presented in the lecture. Give them one minute to write after each main idea
• Answer short open-ended questions by writing a few sentences and then discussing with a partner
• Draw concept maps to link together pieces of information
• Write predictions about an outcome you are about to reveal
• Chose the “best” answer from among different outcomes to a short case study
• Walk the instructor through the steps needed to solve a question for the day
• Evaluate writing or problems that have been written by someone else (anonymous, maybe even you).
• Develop a rubric for an excellent paper.

The more you can apply what you are teaching to students’ day-to-day lives or what’s going on in the world today, the more motivated and engaged students will be.  Real-life applications can tap into or awaken curiosity and give more value and meaning to what they are learning.  Consider the following ways to provide opportunities for authentic encounters with the material:

• Invite guest speakers to talk about how the course content is used in the field
• Relate some of the interesting aspects of your own or other research around UT
• Feature relevant articles in newspapers, journals or magazines to make connections to current events and the culture.
• Introduce case studies where students have to grapple with the “messy” real-world issues

Engage students with Discussions

Good discussions hinge on well-crafted questions. Meaningful questions stimulate students to reflect on the content they have learned and extend it to a higher level. Different types of questions require different levels of thinking. Asking questions to test memorization of content evokes low level recall thinking, whereas questions that require students to predict, analyze or evaluate evoke higher order critical thinking skills and more meaningful discussions.   

Ask questions that:

• Require student input “What questions do you have about this specific part of the process? Or “What do you think the author of our book would say to that?
• Are open-ended even if there is a correct answer “When we multiply two numbers together will the answer always be greater than the multiplicand?” “If this were to happen in a vacuum how would it be different?”
• Stimulate thinking from different perspectives: “Should smoking be banned from the UT campus?” From the perspective of a smoker and a non-smoker.

Thought-provoking questions developed within a good environment for exchanging ideas elicit richer discussions.

Discussions can be initiated with:

• Think Sheets that students complete before class
• Key questions from a text or video that have multiple answers
• Examples that might fit or not fit the model or theory
• Challenges that extend the content in the text
• Personal experiences, yours or theirs, that fit or complicate the concept
• A video and asking for responses
• Polls as a springboard for discussion “Who would tell a store assistant if she gave you too much change?”
• “Whatif” questions
• Intriguing stories, paradoxes, or problems that expand possibilities as more information is revealed
• Multiple-choice questions where all the answers are correct possibilities, but with one answer considered the BEST answer.  Have students explain why or rank order the possible answers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. "Peer Instruction - A User's Manual" 

Mazur, Eric, book Published by Prentice Hall,Inc., New Jersey 07458, ISBN 0-13-565441-6, 1997.

2. "An Overview of Teaching and Learning Research with Classroom Communication Systems"  Abrahamson, A. Louis, Samos, Greece, Conference Proceedings by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., June 3-6, 1998.

3. Classtalk: A Classroom Communication System for Active Learning 
   Dufresne, Robert J., Gerace, William J., Leonard, William J., Mestre, Jose P., Wenk, Laura, paper Published in Journal of Computing in Higher Education, Vol 7, pps 3-47, 1996.

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF KAZAKHSTAN REPUBLIC

COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

“INTERACTIVE TEACHING METHODS”

Teacher :  Laura A. Gazizova

        Karaganda - 2015