Solving the Puzzle: A Student's Perspective on Classroom Engagement

Going into the second year of my degree at Durham University, my lectures went from hour-long classes to double that, with two-hour lectures becoming the new norm. With this change in class length, I noticed that my classmates and I were having difficulty maintaining our attention and focus for such long periods. While our attention spans improved over time, by the end of the year, I’d be lying if I said the whole class was focused and listening for 100% of any two-hour lecture.

Moving into this year, I have learned how demanding university days can be. For example, my typical day started at 6 or 7 a.m. with two hours of netball training, which led to me struggling to stay awake during my afternoon lectures. Additionally, social media may be partly to blame for reduced attention spans. I have found that since platforms such as TikTok have become increasingly popular, my attention span has reduced, and I believe this is a shared experience among my peers. Now more than ever, student engagement is a problem within universities. In this blog, I will highlight some of the lectures I found most engaging and why, as well as some of the main problems and issues I have noticed as a student.

It is safe to say the lectures I’ve enjoyed the most this year have clearly been designed to keep students engaged. For example, this year I took a module called Development, which included a hybrid lecture series focused on Mammalian development. Initially, I wasn’t sure how learning through a mixture of in-person lessons and online videos would work, but in the end, it worked out well for multiple reasons and I ended up finding this lecture series more interesting and enjoyable than my other modules.

The delivery of this lecture series was clearly created with the intention of addressing common reasons that students are not engaged. For example, the PowerPoints in this module were always well-explained and easy to follow, which isn’t always the case, especially in harder modules. I always find that PowerPoints which are dull, disorganised, or lacking relevant diagrams become difficult to stay engaged with, causing my peers to switch off. However, when lecturers use PowerPoints that are more interactive, colourful and contain pictures, it is easier to stay focused. Additionally, as diagrams and images enhance memory and learning, it becomes easier to recall information, and my friends and I typically do better in modules that utilise these techniques compared to those with text-heavy PowerPoints. Incorporating videos into lectures also acts as a great way to summarise ideas, look at arguments from alternative viewpoints, and provide a break from the lecture slides.

Secondly, within this lecture series, explanations were always given at a good pace, making it easier to follow along. Timing of a lecture presentation can significantly contribute to student engagement. One of the main problems I have noticed during my time in education is that sometimes lecturers attempt to cover too much content within their allocated time slot. This often leads to the lecture being rushed, with little explanation or slides being left uncovered by the end of the lecture. This is particularly challenging within a STEM degree if the slides lack well-explained notes (for example, if the lecturer planned to explain verbally but ran out of time) or if they cover difficult content. When left to learn it on our own, it can be challenging. Through talking with my peers, I believe this can cause students to become unmotivated; if the lecturer cannot cover all their material, it leaves a backlog for students to cover themselves. Over time, especially during assignment season, this can result in a lot of work, causing many students to give up or skip lectures to catch up on previous ones. However, the development lecture series I took focused on keeping the pace of content reasonable. There was always a manageable amount of content to get through, which was especially important as this module covered relatively new concepts for most of us. I believe if it was not planned in such a way, student engagement and performance would likely have suffered.

Another important aspect is the breaks within lectures. In this lecture series, we were taught using virtual lectures involving multiple videos, each no longer than 30 minutes. This meant that for every two-hour lecture, there would be 15 minutes of breaks overall and breaks between key sections of any lecture. This differed significantly from most of my experience this year, where some classes often ran without a break or had breaks that were not near the halfway point of the lecture. Consequently, students anticipating a break often became restless waiting for it to occur. This often led to chatting in lectures and other disruptions, making it harder for the lecturer to be heard and for other students to listen. Therefore, having lectures I could watch at my own pace or that contained reasonable breaks made a significant difference.

While it is important to acknowledge that hybrid teaching may not be applicable to every course, I do believe it has its advantages. What kept me engaged in this module was the use of interesting PowerPoints with diagrams and pictures, repetition, and reasonably paced explanations. Student engagement is becoming more of an issue, and I believe educators would greatly benefit from adopting these tactics to keep students focused, involved, and enjoying their classes. Personally, these methods have helped me, and I found that they make lectures more fun and engaging.