In the Classroom
The Mid-Lecture Break: When Less Is More* John A. Olmsted III** Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, California State University, Fullerton, Fullerton, CA 92834
The fact that student attention declines significantly toward the middle of a typical lecture has long been recognized (1–3). One way to alleviate this problem and also stimulate active participation is by inserting a “break in the action” about midway through the lecture. Such a mid-lecture break is a “Pause That Refreshes”. It is a short break around the middle of the class period, usually lasting for two to three minutes, during which a distinctly different activity takes place. These activities take a number of forms, but they are generally designed to encourage active student involvement. Typically, the subject of a mid-lecture break has a meta-learning component. That is, students are invited to reflect on their learning processes and/or on the instructor’s teaching processes. First and foremost, a mid-lecture break provides a change of pace, during which students can recharge their brains in order to avoid the declining attention that typically occurs after about 20–25 minutes of concentrated attention. Consequently, a paramount rule for mid-lecture breaks is that no new subject material is presented. An equally important goal of mid-lecture breaks is to encourage student involvement. To this end, many activities solicit student responses, sometimes orally but more often in written form. The third essential facet of mid-lecture breaks is their use to accomplish in-class assessment. The methods of classroom research developed by Cross and Angelo (4) have been adapted to large chemistry lectures (5). These methods are particularly well suited for use during mid-lecture breaks. Classroom research questions can be posed during a mid-lecture break, and classroom feedback—a key ingredient * Portions of the material in this paper were described in a paper presented at the 213th ACS National Meeting in San Francisco, April 1997. **Email:
[email protected].
of classroom research—can be provided during a subsequent mid-lecture break. Change of pace, student involvement, and in-class assessment are the three essential features of mid-lecture breaks. These can be implemented in a variety of ways, depending on the instructor’s interests and ingenuity. The majority of the mid-lecture breaks that I use fall into three general categories: brief in-class assessment questions, feedback concerning previously collected information, and “news breaks”. These are distinctly different from one another. In-class Assessment Breaks An in-class assessment poses a single question for students to answer in writing on a 4 × 6-in. sheet of paper. Examples of in-class assessment questions include: Assessment of a specific skill that students are expected to master: Do you feel confident about drawing “molecular” pictures? If so, please describe (if you can) what helped you master this skill. If not, please describe (if you can) what is missing from your understanding, and/or what might help. Assessment of an instructional technique: Last time, we did a group problem as mid-lecture break. Did you find this to be helpful? Why or why not? Would you like to do more of these group problem sessions? Why or why not? Assessment of course materials: Please describe what you like best about your textbook, and what you like least about it. Assessment of instructor performance: On one side of the paper, describe what (if anything) you like best about my lectures, and why you like that feature. On the other side of the paper, describe what (if anything) you would like me to change about my lectures, and why you want me to change that feature.
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In the Classroom Self-assessment of performance: Were you satisfied with your performance on the first hour examination? If you were, describe what study strategy most contributed to your success. If you were not, describe what changes in study strategies you will make before the next exam. Assessment of student needs: Friday’s class will be review in preparation for Monday’s exam on thermodynamics. What specific topics would you like me to cover in the review?
As these examples indicate, in-class assessment questions can address any aspect of the course: usefulness of materials, instructor performance, student preparation and/or mastery of concepts, student study patterns, student needs. Yes–no questions can be appropriate, but it is important that such questions also direct students to substantiate their answers. Feedback Breaks “Feedback” refers to instructors’ reports to the class about student responses to classroom research questions. The techniques of classroom assessment provide feedback from students to the instructor. The effectiveness of these techniques is considerably amplified when the information collected is shared with the students, completing a feedback loop. Midlecture breaks provide an ideal vehicle for such feedback. As examples, here are summaries of the feedback that I provided for some of the questions listed above. Assessment of an instructional technique. The frequency of student responses was summarized (three-quarters of the students found the group problem-solving exercise helpful). The following positive responses were shared with the class: It adds to the input of students to the class period and makes it easier and more enjoyable. [It’s a] wake-up call to actually do and understand the problem prior to leaving class. It’s a good opportunity for us to discuss our ideas with each other and for you to see where we stand as a class. Explaining things to someone else makes me remember the material better. Also, finding out others don’t understand what I don’t understand makes me feel better. [It’s] very helpful—can we do our tests like that (just kidding)?
The negative responses also were shared: Not instead of mid-lecture break. Mid-lecture breaks should be used to just rest our brains, because sometimes lecture info. can be overwhelming. [It] limits the people in the group to learning at the pace of the dumbest person. I don’t work well in groups. I’m more of an independent learner. [It was not useful], mostly because it was rather time consuming.
Assessment of instructor performance. Feedback here includes both reporting back to the students those things that they asked me to change and indicating what changes I am prepared to make. Many students request more example problems, such as, “It would be better for me if more examples were worked and explanations were based on them. This way I can act like a robot and just compute the same way you did to get the solutions.” My response was to observe that robots usually did poorly on my exams, which require the ability to think. Nearly as many students request that I slow down and leave overheads up longer. “Sure there are rate laws for 526
concentration but there are also rate laws for the students understanding of the material. The rate at which the teacher talks is a little fast, and finally when you ask if anyone has any questions, they are all intimidated to ask because of the speed of the lecture.” After noting that the most common requests were for more examples and a slower pace, I asked the class if anyone had suggestions as to how we might accomplish both. Assessment of student needs. For a review session, I prepare an overhead listing specific topics or questions from the student responses, in reasonably logical order, and organize my review presentation around that overhead. The student requests serve as starting points for discussion or examples. Here are the student requests used for a review session prior to a thermodynamics exam. How do you detect which problem is what type? Go over the theories you want us to know for “short answer” type questions. Review free energy. I don’t quite understand what it is. Show how q is related to work and calorimetry. Do a detailed example of a problem worked out to completion.
These summaries illustrate features that I regularly include in presenting feedback. Let the students know the frequency of responses to questions having a “yes–no” quality. Report back to them, verbatim, some of the comments they have made. Make a particular point to include humorous and negative comments. Provide running commentaries on these student responses. Indicate a willingness to make adjustments when feasible. Bottom-of-the-Hour News Breaks An occasional feature of my mid-lecture breaks is a “Bottom-of-the-Hour News Break”, patterned after the news clip reporting used by many AM radio stations. News breaks convey announcements and chemistry-related news presented under the guise of national and local news, police reports, and the weather. As an example of national news, on the day that the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded for the discovery of buckminsterfullerene I featured a line structure of the molecule, pointed out where in the textbook students could find this compound, and talked a bit about its chemistry. “Local” news often takes the form of announcements, such as availability of material at the copy center or changes in scheduled due dates for assignments. Items showing up on the police blotter include “crime” reports such as student delinquency in picking up graded exams and “missing person” reports when a student is absent for a number of class sessions. The weather typically contains a prediction concerning the likelihood of quizzes in the next few days: for example, “weather will be clear through the weekend, but a storm front is expected early next week, with the probability of quizzes reaching 75% on Monday.” Discussion I have used mid-lecture breaks effectively in preparatory and first- and second-semester general chemistry lecture classes whose size ranged between 50 and 120. As class size increases, collection of student responses and refocusing attention on the subject might become difficult, but neither
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In the Classroom
has been a problem in a 120-seat auditorium. My courses are populated overwhelmingly by nonmajors, primarily engineering and life science students, with about 10% chemistry or biochemistry majors. Our student body is highly diverse, with high representations of under-represented groups and a significant number of reentry students. All these cohorts respond positively to the technique, as indicated by a recent exit survey in which 39 of 41 respondents rated mid-lecture breaks “extremely valuable” and the other two rated them of average value. Because the instructor has full control over what to do in each mid-lecture break, it is easy to adapt to the atmosphere of any particular class. A word of warning, however: mid-lecture breaks are addictive. At the end of one semester, I announced that I planned to forego the mid-lecture break in order to allow a full review of topics that would be on the final. The uproar was deafening, and I hastily improvised a mid-lecture break. The feedback aspect of mid-lecture breaks entails more than reporting the range and frequency of student responses. It is equally important for the instructor to make adjustments in the course format in response to student suggestions. When a large number of students criticize some aspect of the lecture style, the instructor needs to address the problem (even if just to acknowledge it—students regularly criticize my handwriting, with justification). When students ask that certain subjects be emphasized during review, the instructor should emphasize those subjects, or explain why it is not essential to do so. A useful rule is not to seek student responses about an aspect of your course that you are unwilling to modify. As with other instructional techniques used as just one portion of an arsenal, it is difficult to collect hard data on the effect of mid-lecture breaks on student learning. On the other hand, it is quite easy to assess how students respond to this feature, using in-class surveys (administered during midlecture breaks) and exit questionnaires (administered as part of the last class meeting). When students are asked “What feature of the class presentations do you like best, and why”, they consistently select the mid-lecture break. At about the midpoint of one semester, nearly half the students chose the mid-lecture break, commenting “It lessens the tension and stress”, “It helps me recharge my brain”, “Very helpful to the learning environment”, and “Mid-lecture breaks are awesome.” When students are asked to identify the feature of mid-lecture breaks that they find most useful, nearly two-thirds report that the mid-lecture break itself is most useful, adding comments such as, “The most beneficial part is the break itself. [It] gives you a chance to clear your head.” “I think just relaxing my brain for a few minutes gets me ready.” “My writing hand gets a break. [It] helps reduce risk of carpaltunnel syndrome.” Other students report that questions about
study habits tell them what study habits work well for other students, and that “poll” results let them know that they are not alone in experiencing difficulty with the course material. Perhaps the most revealing assessment of the mid-lecture break comes from exit surveys. In my first class meeting of each semester, I administer a survey in which I list 11 instructional strategies and ask the students how valuable they believe each will be. In the last class meeting of the semester, I administer the survey again. At the beginning, students rate mid-lecture breaks next-to-last in usefulness, just ahead of easy homework assignments. At the end of the semester, the mid-lecture break has always ranked in the top five, along with structured lectures, detailed problem-solving examples, summaries of the important ideas, and review sessions before exams. The mid-lecture break is ranked very highly as an instructional strategy even though no conceptual material is presented during these breaks. In summary, mid-lecture breaks recharge student batteries, yield useful information, and increase student involvement. The technique has elements in common with other recently described techniques for increasing student involvement, the suggestion box (6 ) and the one-minute paper (7); in fact, mid-lecture breaks could be used to administer one-minute papers or to collect suggestions. The mid-lecture break requires only modest modification of the lecture format, unlike other more extensive techniques for increasing active student involvement such as cooperative learning (8) and small-group problem-solving (9). Acknowledgment Financial support that was generously provided by the late A. James Diefenderfer, former Dean of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at California State University, Fullerton, permitted me to attend the 1989 NCRIPTAL Smoky Mountain Seminar II, where the seeds of classroom research were sown in my mind. Literature Cited 1. Bligh, D. A. What’s the Use of Lectures? Penguin: London, 1972. 2. McLeish, J. The Psychology of Teaching Methods; University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1976. 3. Johnstone, A. H.; Percival, F. Educ. Chem. 1976, 13, 49–50. 4. Cross, K. P.; Angelo, T. A. Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for Faculty; National Center for Research to Improve Postsecondary Teaching and Learning: Ann Arbor, MI, 1988. 5. Olmsted, J. III. In Classroom Research: Early Lessons from Success; Angelo, T. A., Ed.; Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, 1991; pp 55–66. 6. Stein, A. J. Chem. Educ. 1997, 74, 788–790. 7. Harwood, W. S. J. Chem. Educ. 1996, 73, 229–230. 8. Cooper, M. M. J. Chem. Educ. 1995, 72, 162–164. 9. Steiner, R. P. J. Chem. Educ. 1980, 57, 433–434.
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