Making Lectures Come Alive: Keep it Short

9. Keep it Short

1. Learning diminishes after 20 minutes of uninterrupted talking.

2. Check in with students periodically to assess their learning.

3. Need-to-Know vs Nice-to-Know

When constructing your lectures, be sure to only include the information that students have to have in order to perform the skill or change behavior. You can cut out a lot of the other things that don’t lead to mastery.

4. Be sure to leave time to process the information they have learned.

5. Change it up! Don’t always do the same activities. The brain loves learning in different ways.