Do not Lose Your Students in Large Lectures: A Five-Step Paper-Based Model to Foster Students’ Participation

Like most of the pharmacy colleges in developing countries with high population growth, public pharmacy colleges in Egypt are experiencing a significant increase in students’ enrollment annually due to the large youth population, accompanied with the keenness of students to join pharmacy colleges as a step to a better future career. In this context, large lectures represent a popular approach for teaching the students as economic and logistic constraints prevent splitting them into smaller groups. Nevertheless, the impact of large lectures in relation to student learning has been widely questioned due to their educational limitations, which are related to the passive role the students maintain in lectures. Despite the reported feebleness underlying large lectures and lecturing in general, large lectures will likely continue to be taught in the same format in these countries. Accordingly, to soften the negative impacts of large lectures, this article describes a simple and feasible 5-step paper-based model to transform lectures from a passive information delivery space into an active learning environment. This model mainly suits educational establishments with financial constraints, nevertheless, it can be applied in lectures presented in any educational environment to improve active participation of students. The components and the expected advantages of employing the 5-step paper-based model in large lectures as well as its limitations and ways to overcome them are presented briefly. The impact of applying this model on students’ engagement and learning is currently being investigated.