A Survey of Extrinsic Means for Increased Audience Attention

Background

We present an overview of established and innovative means and teaching approaches that contribute to higher students’ attention during lecture. The results are based on an international survey among lecturers from eleven universities in 2016.

Student Motivation

Students are motivated in three different ways: personal interest, entertainment, and motivated by fear of an event happening, as is shown in the following Figure (based on an idea by Daniel von Felten, ZHAW).

Personal interest is an intrinsic type of motivation where the student is motivated from within, whether it stems from curiosity or other factors. Students can also be motivated by what can be called “entertainment”, in which there is someone or something else that causes the motivation. Examples of these could range from a video or TV-show to a lecturer that appeals to the student. Finally, fear can be a great motivating factor. In the student case, fear of failing a class can serve as a motivator to learn materials and achieve a high grade.

 

Extrinsic Methods

Classroom Environment

• Ensure there is enough oxygen by opening a window.
• Arrange seats and tables such that interaction between students and lecturer is supported.
• Some participants reported that making the students move (getting up, walking in the classroom, teaching from the back of the classroom) contributes to higher student attention. Research studies from neurosciences on brain trauma appear to support this approach, since it showed that physical activities are correlated with increased brain cell production.
• A special case of student movement is spontaneous discussions, where students walk in the classroom, and upon stopping they have to discuss with the first student they meet about a certain topic.

Behavior of the Lecturer

• The lecturer can speak louder or speak quieter during class time. If a professor is naturally a loud speaker, speaking quieter will command the attention of students, and vice versa.
• Several participants of the survey reported that mentioning any advice about the exam will immediately focus the students’ attention to what is being said. A similar effect seems to occur if the lecturer says “this is important”.
• A powerful rhetorical means is to be silent for, say, 60 seconds. Supposedly, Cicero, one of the great Roman orators and politicians, used pauses to create tension and to emphasize important messages. More recently, the significance of pauses have been investigated primarily in the context of synthesized speech. For an overview of typical variants of this technique, see http://sixminutes.dlugan.com/pause-speech.
• In general, there exist various ideas how the lecturer can surprise the audience: make a joke, say something totally unexpected, throw a piece of chalk, abruptly change topic, make a mistake (on purpose), etc.

Interaction between Students and Lecturer

• A lecturer from Switzerland describes his teaching approach to be “a very asking based one”, meaning that he often asks questions to the students. Due to the high frequency of questions, the students “know after the first class” that they always have to expect a question from him, keeping tension high.
• One lecturer uses post-it’s on a whiteboard to collect open questions of the students in a brainstorming session, and then answer these questions to close gaps in know-how and understanding. She notes that the anonymous process and the physical activity helps to motivate the students to participate actively.
• In the “Cephalonia method”, the idea is to give each of the students a card, with each card containing unique images and prepared questions. The instructor will go through a slideshow that contains the pictures. When the slideshow displays each picture, the student who is holding the card with the picture displayed on the slide will then read out loud the question that is on the card. The instructor will then explain the answer of this question with another slide. This method is common in library orientations and not only forces students to participate in the class, but also intends to make the class more vivid.

Challenging and rewarding the students

• One lecturer used a cake recipe to help the students apply some of their obvious competencies from one field to new one. Students had to answer questions about the cake recipe and write down the cognitive procedure that allowed them to perform the task. Then they had to apply the cognitive process to another field relative to their syllabus. The students were so surprised they did not make the bond, and this extrinsic means did not convince them. But it was a playful way to establish a nice atmosphere in the classroom.
• One lecturer holds a two-minute break after twenty minutes of lecture time, during which each student has to speak to her/his neighbor. They have to identify together the important message of the last 20 minutes of lecture, or something they didn’t understand. The teacher picks some students as actors for role playing, to illustrate opposite conceptions of a controversial point.
• One lecturer throws chocolate candies in class to any student who answers her questions or any student who poses a very interesting question.

Resources:

• Publication: How to throw Chocolate at Students – Cieliebak Magid Pradarelli – EDUCON 2017. Mark Cieliebak, Amani Magid, and Beatrice Pradarelli. EDUCON 2017.
• Raw Data in Excel: Extrinsic Student Motivation – Cieliebak et al – EDUCON 2017 – Survey_answers_web – v1.0
• Analysis of Demographics and Statistics: Extrinsic Means for Increased Audience Attention – Demographics and Statistics v1.0