How To Present Key Ideas and Keep Students Engaged

As a teacher, you know how important it is for your students to grasp the ideas you share. This valuable information either forms the foundation of the lesson or acts as a link in a wider body of knowledge. 

Either way, if your students tune out during your lessons and miss the point, there’s a good chance they’ll struggle with effects that could ripple out all the way to exam time – and to their detriment. 

Cognitive Load and Dual Coding

Cognitive load theory (CLT) offers a compelling explanation for why some students tune out during lessons or lectures. According to one study, the working memory has a limited capacity for storing information, so high levels of cognitive load can hinder students’ attempts to transfer excessive or unclear information from the working memory to the long-term memory. Basically, when the working memory becomes overloaded, students disengage and tune out.

The study also highlights the three elements comprising CLT, including:

• Intrinsic Load: This constitutes content complexity based on students’ prior knowledge of the subject matter. High levels of this can impede students from processing the information you impart.
• Extraneous Load: This occurs when instruction is poorly delivered, leading students to process minor points and peripheral concepts rather than the key ideas.
• Germane Load: This contributes directly to better schema formation through cognitive effort, supporting the transfer of information from the working memory to the long-term memory.

What this means for you is that good teaching supports meaningful information processing by reducing extraneous load. This is where dual coding theory comes in. Research shows that we are more likely to remember pictures than words (the “picture superiority effect”). This is because pictures are dually coded (they use verbal and image codes), while words are mostly coded verbally.

As separate brain systems process image and verbal codes, these codes have additive and independent effects on memory retention. This finding is the basis for dual-coding theory, which encourages teachers and lecturers to present and students to develop multiple representations of the same material, such as images and text, or auditory and visual. 

It’s important to note that this is not the same as the “learning styles” concept, which is based on the theory that students learn best when information is presented in their preferred modality (e.g., auditory, tactile, or visual). Research does not support this approach.

With these theories in mind, here are a few practical ways to present key ideas in ways that’ll stop your students from tuning out.

1) Keep Lessons Simple

One of the easiest ways to keep your students engaged when presenting the most important points is to keep your lessons simple by removing unnecessary or redundant information. By only providing the main ideas and information that supports them, you reduce cognitive overload. As passionate as you might be about extra information on the topic, including it in your lessons can be too much for your students’ working memory and ultimately distract them from learning.

This approach is related to the coherence principle. To put it simply, less is more.

If the same information is included in textual and visual forms, you’ve introduced redundancy. However, it’s not redundant if you share some elements in textual form and other elements in visual form, as this can improve learning outcomes. This is known as the multimedia principle.

A couple of ways to clearly convey ideas simply are to avoid using fun facts or decorative images when explaining key points and to use a single, clear example rather than a few competing ones.

2) Use Visuals

As we remember visuals better than words, you can make posters, charts, diagrams, infographics, or timelines to accompany verbal explanations. You can use AI for these creative tasks, as it offers an ideal way to reduce your workload while remaining incredibly effective.  

This approach is in keeping with the picture superiority effect, dual coding, and the multimedia principle. That said, keep visual elements simple and relevant, or they’ll have the opposite effect and increase students’ cognitive load.

Some practical ways to do this include replacing text-heavy slides with annotated visuals or diagrams, or asking students to create their own mind maps, sketches, or other visuals. You can also accompany your verbal explanation with a live drawing or modelling process. For example, if you’re a Year 8 history teacher explaining the causes of the First World War, use a labelled diagram of alliances instead of a paragraph of text and add the name of each country while explaining verbally.

3) Segment and Pace Your Lessons

Some students are likely to tune out if you deliver a continuous stream of information at a relatively fast pace. Instead, aim to segment and pace your lessons, as this controls the flow and speed at which you impart information.

The Educational Psychology Review study highlights positive evidence for doing so. Students who learned from segmented videos performed better than students who learned from unsegmented full-length videos. The segmented videos used understandable segments that did not disrupt the dynamic visualisations’ narrative, enabling students’ working memory to process the segments as a single element.

There are a few ways you can apply this approach to your lessons. 

• Avoid long, uninterrupted talking. Instead, break your explanations into short segments, occasionally pausing for information retrieval or questions. 
• Incorporate an educational game into your lessons to change the pace and add an element of fun that promotes a more relaxed way of learning.  
• Use the “Stop and Jot” processing activity by pausing briefly and asking students to quickly write down key points, questions, or reflections in a notebook. 

This can help ensure engagement and enhance comprehension. Alternatively, ask a question and ask students to jot down their answers before asking one or two to share their responses with the rest of the class, enabling you to gauge understanding in real time.

Keep Students Focused On The Point

Looking at a class of distracted students can leave you feeling defeated, but it doesn’t need to be this way. Rather than jumping through hoops, you need only make a few subtle changes in how you present key ideas to keep your students tuned in, support comprehension, and help them remember what they’re learning.