Students quickly disengage in a traditional lecture when the one-way delivery of content requires passive digestion by note-taking students. An alternative approach is to return to the chalk board and prompt students to actively reflect on content as you convey it through a technique I call ‘Lecture Pictionary’. 

The method has three advantages: 

1. It forces the educator to distill a complex concept down to its bare essentials.

2. Students must actively think about the link amongst pieces of information being drawn on the board.

3. It’s fun for educator and student alike.

In a nut shell, the approach relies on piecing together seemingly disparate bits of information in graphical form to ultimately form a coherent whole that results in a ‘penny drop moment’. 

– What on earth is the lecturer trying to draw on the blackboard?

– How are these images related to one another? 

This latter connection can usually only be made using a student’s knowledge from previous lectures or other course content. But it is also possible to use this technique to teach simple concepts to students with no prior knowledge of a topic. 

Lecture Pictionary has been a hugely successful teaching method in moderate-sized classroom settings (50-70 students) and is extremely popular with students. It is also possible to recreate in a pre-recorded video lecture with the help of a studio audience and a light board. Here’s an example of Lecture Pictionary in practice: