Now that (a) the new academic year is under way, and (b) the admissions process for entrants this year is well and truly over, and (c) the next round of undergraduate applications is not due to start for a couple of weeks, it's about time I started blogging again since I will have some time to draw breath.

So, for no particular reason other than I'm always on the lookout for things to help improve my lectures, here's my first link after the summer hiatus: Tomorrow's Professor Blog: 818 Quick-thinks: The Interactive Lecture

A study by Ruhl, Hughes and Schloss (1987) compared lectures presented without pauses with lectures where, every 12-18 minutes students paused for two minutes and discussed and reworked their notes (without interaction with the teacher). Students in the latter group performed better on free-recall quizzes and on a comprehension test. In fact, the differences were so large that they would have raised the performance of the experimental students' one-two letter grades (depending on grading scales used).

Sounds like a good complement to the One-Minute Paper scheme I use at the end of every one of my lectures.