Let Students Work: Analysis of the Role of Differing Facilitation on Student Engagement in a Large Stadium-Style Lecture Hall

The classroom environment is shaped by factors such as facilitation style, curricular design, and classroom layout. These factors are all inputs into student framing of the classroom environment and affect a student’s comfort interacting within it. Promoting student discourse in active learning environments provides students the opportunity to explain their thinking and develop their understanding of natural phenomena. However, successfully implementing these practices in large lecture environments is often difficult. Undergraduate introductory chemistry lectures were investigated to identify the effects that instructional practices had on student engagement. Instructor facilitation, question level, and student interactions were analyzed and compared to provide insights into what instructional practices may promote or hinder student engagement in a large enrollment course. Overall instructors were positioning themselves as an authority on knowledge in the classroom by leading questions authoritatively like instructor-focused didactic lecturing that led to a decrease in student engagement. These results highlight the complexity of the classroom ecosystem related to student interactions and the role that facilitation plays in social and cognitive engagement.