Turning lectures into interactive, student-led question and answer sessions is known to increase learning, but enabling interaction in a large class seems an insurmountable task. This can discourage adoption of this new approach – who has time to individualize responses, address questions from over 200 students and encourage active participation in class? An approach adopted by a teaching team ...

Years one and two of a three-year study revealed that, contrary to their teachers' expectations, students working hands on with computer animations and simulations in small groups with a teacher circulating among the groups performed no better, as measured by pre-post gains, than students engaging in teacher-moderated whole class discussions while observing the animations and simulations projec...