Keeping Student Attention During Lectures

Lately, there have been some interesting musings in the educational literature about lectures. One article suggested ways of keeping students' attention during lectures is through incorporating active learning, which is supported by research (Hoekstra, 2025). Numerous studies place student attention spans at about 10-15 minutes. However, this varies depending on the learner's age, subject matter, teaching method, sleep, and distractibility (Bradbury, 2016). Attention is also related to focus and engagement. However, for as much active learning is the current buzzword in education, another interesting article challenges this concept by contending the term active learning itself is ill-define (Chew, 2025). In addition to these discussions, neurobiology encourages giving students' brains a break or a pause during learning because the brain needs time to recover in order to keep learning, which factors into attention (Rice, 2018; Willis, 2006). 

 The reputation of lectures has been tossed around quite a bit. Previously, there were a lot of negative judgments about lectures, fueled by a study that defined a "learning pyramid" that reported lectures had the lowest retention rate compared to other teaching methods (Mosaica, 1996). With the emergence of research about the role of active learning on retention, lectures, seen as passive learning, continued to be vilified. However, despite the widespread messages that lecture is an ineffective and obsolete teaching method, there are substantive challenges and debates to this accuracy. Recently, there has been significant evidence that the data from which this "learning pyramid" was built was not based on empirical information or evidence-based research, and the percentages assigned to the amount of learning regarding lectures lacked consistency and validation (Letrud and Hernes, 2018). 

 The truth is many of us enjoy lecturing, and despite all the research on active learning, it is still one of the most common methods used in higher education (Weimer, 2019). However, there are ways to improve lecture delivery, make it more "interactive," and maintain student attention and focus. I am sure we all have memories of that teacher who stood behind the podium, droning on for hours in a monotonous voice, and never looked up from their notes. I think we would all agree this is not effective for learning. However, I would also bet you can recall at least one professor or teacher who used lectures predominantly but was so effectively engaging, motivating, and interesting. When the class was over, you couldn't believe 3 hours had passed! So what was the difference?  

 The lecturer made the lecture interactive and engaging. They stepped away from the "traditional" lecture, where information is communicated in one direction from teacher to student with little to no other activity during class time, and instead used interactive lecturing. So, what is interactive lecturing? Simply stated, it intentionally intersperses active learning activities at different points throughout the lecture. I suspect many of you do this already.  

As defined by Barkley and Major (2018), when used effectively, a lecture can provide students with information drawn from multiple sources, not just the textbook. The lecturer can present information that may be otherwise unavailable to students, such as sharing an experience or story to illustrate a point. Lectures provide an opportunity for the teacher to illuminate differences and similarities and clarify confusing principles or concepts. A teacher using lectures can also role-model critical thinking and professionalism and engender motivation and interest.  

Here are a few suggestions for ways to make lectures interactive  

•      Pre-planning is required – ask yourself how you can make the lecture engaging and interactive so that it engages students to work directly with the material or concepts they are currently learning to deepen their understanding. 
• "Chunk" your class time – the concept of chunkingin education refers to intentionally breaking the material you plan to teach into smaller or shorter segments and providing the opportunity for students to work with or apply this material or skills before moving to the next section or chunk (Lovett et al., 2023). For example, in a 50-minute lecture, there could be 20 minutes of lecture followed by an activity that engages the students with the material or concepts you just presented. 
• Add (active) learning activities.   

o   I've placed the word active in parentheses because, as I mentioned previously, some call this concept of active learning into question, reporting it as ill-defined. They suggest that active learning may focus more on making students active than on whether that activity supports their learning (Chew, 2025). The evidence for engaging students in their learning isn't in question here. What is, are whether teachers intentionally select and use active activities that help students apply and engage in the material they are learning.

o   Leave blanks in the PowerPoints/Keynote presentation. This may require you to have two versions: a faculty one you use in class and a student one you post for them. Rather than giving them all the information on the slide, leave some blank, which requires them to fill it in during the lecture – this can be true for diagrams as well – give them the picture on the slide, but let them draw or circle and label the diagram. 

o   Develop guides, worksheets, and class assignments that students must complete in class. These could be done individually, in pairs, or in small groups. 

o   Use the Socratic Method (one of my favorites) – intentional dialogue through the use of questions and answers to stimulate critical thinking. Think of it more as asking questions but letting the students find their solutions rather than a traditional question-answer dynamic where the students ask questions, and the teacher responds. 

o   Recent research has highlighted that what students know about a topic before they come to the lecture influences what they can learn (Cerbin, 2018). So, finding ways to determine what students know, in general, before the lecture may be helpful. You can use a pre-quiz administered before the class meeting or start with an opening self-reflective question about the topic at the start of the lecture. Or, you can give students pre-lecture assignments that must be completed to provide them with the basic information they need to make the lecture content more relevant and engaging (He, 2022). You are right if you think this sounds like a bit of a flipped classroom approach. There is a flavor of that here. And we all know that while we want and assign students reading with the intention they read before class, we know that rarely happens.  

o   Incorporating polling tools in your PowerPoint (Kahoot! Socrative, Poll Everywhere) provides you and the students a sense of whether they are grasping the material. 

o   Consider adding a short, simple in-class assessment to be completed before the students leave to help you gauge learning, such as The Muddiest Point or The 2-Minute Paper (Angelo & Cross, 1993; He, 2022).     

• Incorporate pauses or brain breaks.  

o   "Brain breaks," or pauses, are precisely that – giving the working brain a break or pause. By doing so, learning and retention can be enhanced. Although the idea of taking a break, for example, when studying, isn't new, the intentional use of planning breaks in your teaching approach may be. The idea of brain breaks reaches both sides of the teaching-learning dynamic, as students and teachers can use it to enhance learning and increase retention. 

o   Neurologically speaking, with sustained focus, neurotransmitters become depleted, and learning diminishes. Rest is needed for the neurotransmitters to replenish and resume processing the material being learned; otherwise, retention is negatively affected (Sousa, 2011; Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2014; Willis, 2006). How can we give students' brains a rest? Intentionally plan in brain breaks and ensure they happen. The good news is that neurotransmitters will quickly replenish, sometimes in just 5 minutes, if given a chance to do so (Willis, 2006). 

As a lecturer, be sure to move around the room, be enthusiastic, and consider sharing appropriate personal or professional experiences or stories to illustrate a concept further. Students tend to stay more attentive when they have to track you as you move around the room.

The debate about whether lecture is a useful method is finally coming full circle. In the emerging evidence,  lectures are making a comeback as an acceptable and worthy teaching method (Barkley & Major, 2018; Gooblar, 2019). What is important here is recognizing what has always been true: There is no single best teaching method. It is up to us as educators to determine the best method for teaching whatever content or material we have to teach and to consider doing it in a way that fosters learning based on what we now know about how the brain learns. When we factor all this together, lecturing is still valuable.  

References 

Angelo, T. A., & Cross, K. P.(1993). Classroom assessment techniques: A handbook for college teachers. (2^nd Ed.). Jossey-Bass. 

Barkley, E.F., & Major, C.H. (2018). Interactive Lecturing: A handbook for college faculty. Jossey-Bass  

Bradbury, N. A. (2016, November 8). Attention span during lectures: 8 seconds, 10 minutes, or more? Advances in Physiology Education  https://doi.org/10.1152/advan.00109.2016 

Cerbin, W. (2018). Improving student learning from lectures. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 4(3), 151-163. 

Chew, S. L. (2025, January 20). Active learning is an educational buzzword (and not particularly useful). The Teaching Professor  https://www.teachingprofessor.com/topics/student-learning/active-learning-is-an-educational-buzzword-and-not-particularly-useful/ 

Gooblar, D. (2019, January 15). Is it ever okay to lecture? The Chronicle of Higher Education.  https://www.chronicle.com/article/Is-It-Ever-OK-to/245458  

He, Y (2022, January 18). Quasi-active learning: An approach to blending active learning and lecture. The Teaching Professor. https://www.teachingprofessor.com/topics/teaching-strategies/active-learning/quasi-active-learning-an-approach-to-blending-active-learning-and-lecture/ 

Hoekstra, J. (2025, February 3). Effective strategies for sustaining student attention during PowerPoint lectures. Faculty Focus. https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-with-technology-articles/effective-strategies-for-sustaining-student-attention-during-powerpoint-lectures/ 

Letrud, K., & Hernes, S. (2018). Excavating the origins of the learning pyramid myths. Cogent Education, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2018.1518638 

Lovett, M. C., Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., Ambrose, S. A. & Norman, M. K. (2023). How Learning Works; 8 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching (2ed.). Jossey Bass. 

Mosaica. (1996). Starting strong: A guide to pre-service training. Washington, D.C. : MOSAICA: The Center for Nonprofit Development and Pluralism. 

Rice, G.T. (2018). Hitting pause: 65 Lecture breaks to refresh and reinforce learning. Stylus. 

Sousa, D. A. (2011). How the brain learns (4^th ed.).Corwin. 

Tokuhama-Espinosa, T. (2014). Making classrooms better: 50 practical applications of mind, brain and education science. W.W. Norton & Company. 

Weimer, M. (2019, February 1). Lectures and prior knowledge: Helping students make sense of new material. The Teaching Professor. https://www.teachingprofessor.com/topics/for-those-who-teach/lectures-and-prior-knowledge-helping-students-make-sense-of-new-material/ 

Willis, J. (2006). Research-based strategies to ignite student learning: insights from a neurologist and classroom teacher. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD).