Teachers and lecturers spend a lot of time and effort trying to make their lessons interesting for students. But is it possible that students’ preconceptions are just as important as the actual lesson content for determining how boring (or otherwise) they perceive sessions to be? Perhaps lessons are boring just because you expect them to be boring.
This idea is supported by a recent study, which showed that students who expected a psychology lecture to be boring felt more bored after the lecture than students who did not expect the lecture to be boring. This finding was supported by a second study in which students were asked to watch a video of a lecture. Beforehand, one-third were told that students at their university had rated it the most boring lecture of the year, onethird were told that the lecture was rated as the most interesting lecture of the year, and one-third were simply told that they were about to watch a lecture.
Your organisation does not have access to this article.
Sign up today to give your students the edge they need to achieve their best grades with subject expertise
Subscribe
