The Skill of Learning from Lectures
Some viewers asked for a video on learning from lectures. So I finally made one.
Link to hear news on my membership site: https://forms.gle/2XzhvnGptxeYc28n8
Sign up to my free newsletter, Avoiding Folly, here: http://www.benjaminkeep.com
00:00 Starting with a question
00:53 Lectures and learning
2:10 On the popularity of the lecture format
2:56 Preparing for a lecture
4:38 Making the most of reading assignments
6:33 The goals of preparation: cognitive load
7:37 Create relevant prior knowledge
8:10 Get relevant practical experience
8:29 Begin the organizational process
9:06 Going to the lecture
10:54 Good attention
11:47 Attention drops during lecture
12:29 Dealing with online lectures
13:37 Reviewing after the lecture
14:42 Creative ways of reviewing
16:20 Fundamentals are key
17:26 Frameworks to help you review
19:50 Review vs doing homework
21:38 A little goes a long way
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The scrolling text when I was talking about cognitive load comes from an excerpt from an old Vanity Fair magazine, written by P.G. Wodehouse, available here: https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/20....
The green screen Youtube video (talking about stopping at 10 minutes, 30 minutes) came from here: • Green Screen - 1 hour 1080p
I used an example lecture from Scott Page’s Model Thinking on Coursera, found here. The specific excerpt, was taken from the first lecture on aggregation. https://www.coursera.org/lecture/mode.... I definitely recommend Scott Page’s work, especially if you’re interested in social science and social dynamics.
The "taking a test" example came from an MIT course on differential equations: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-03-dif....
REFERENCES
On attention during lectures. The basic take-away is that passive learning during lectures is similar to a vigilance task (asking people to monitor for low frequency signals from a background of noise - radar monitoring for instance). 10-30 minutes in, steep attention decrements.
Young, M. S., Robinson, S., & Alberts, P. (2009). Students pay attention!: Combating the vigilance decrement to improve learning during lectures. Active Learning in Higher Education, 10(1), 41–55. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787408100194
If you are a teacher looking to improve student learning during lectures, this piece from almost 40 years ago still holds up. If you’re a science teacher at the undergraduate level, I recommend visiting the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative.
Gibbs, G., Habeshaw, S., & Habeshaw, T. (1987). Improving Student Learning During Lectures. Medical Teacher, 9(1), 11–20. https://doi.org/10.3109/0142159870902...
This is a more modern piece covering some of the same ground:
Cerbin, W. (2018). Improving student learning from lectures. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 4(3), 151–163. https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000113
Watch video The Skill of Learning from Lectures online without registration, duration hours minute second in high quality. This video was added by user Benjamin Keep, PhD, JD 15 November 2023, don't forget to share it with your friends and acquaintances, it has been viewed on our site 50,648 once and liked it 2.6 thousand people.