Quick Tip: Use the Pause Procedure in Class

From gradhack.org

The Pause Procedure is one part of enhanced lectures. The principle behind it is simple: stop talking. Attention spans for adults are only about 10-20 minutes long, so a lot of what is said during a lecture will be shortly forgotten afterwards. Kids have even a shorter attention span with some saying it correlates to their age. So if they're 5 years old, they can pay attention for 5 minutes.

Research backs the pause procedure up. Lectures would talk for 12-18 minutes and then stop talking for a couple of minutes. During this time students would work in pairs without the teacher interfering. After the entire lecture finished students had 3 minutes to write down what they learned.

The results were shocking. 12 days after the lecture a 65 multiple choice quiz was given. Teachers who had employed the pause procedure had students sore up to two letter grades higher than students whose teacher did not use the pause procedure. Teachers are only lecturing about 6 minutes less than if they don't use the pause procedure. It's all about quality not quantity.

Some people say that the pause procedure isn't good since it cuts down on lecture time, but the results speak for themselves. Teachers work less but get paid the same. Students are more active in class and learn more. Students and teachers are happy so the admin is happy. It's a win-win-win situation.

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