When lecturing to 100 or 200 students, engaging everyone is hard – some research point out, that even when the lecturer experiences engaged interactions with the students, a great majority of the student are not active at all. And even if some students learn through lectures there is a lot of research pointing to much better learning if students are active and engaged.
Here is Maria Andersen explaining the problem and the research on better learning in large lecture rooms:

Video from Maria Andersen’s keynote at the “Make a Difference” conference at UCPH in 2014.
Maria Andersen is a PhD in Higher Education Leadership and an entrepreneur in the ED-tech field.

Some options for activities in large lectures:

Peer instruction and discussions with clickers

A way of creating more interaction and higher level thinking in the large lecture room, is to use clickers to pose questions to the room followed by peer instruction on the topic. Professor of Chemistry Jan Halborg Jensen explains how he does it in the lecture room in this video:

Video from Jan Halborg Jensen’s keynote at the “Make a Difference” conference at UCPH in 2014
Jan Halborg Jensen, professor of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen.

Collaborative assignments in Google Docs

Divide students into groups but dispersed across the auditorium, so they have to work together online, not with the people sitting next to them. Have the students collaborate in a google doc and create a product together.

 

Maria Andersen explains how she does it in the lecture room in this video:

If you’re still wondering how to create time for these activities in the lecture, have a look at our theme: flipped classroom.