It depends on your learning outcomes and your understanding towards pedagogy. Teaching by lectures sometimes can be very boring, so you need to design learning carefully. On the other hand, teaching by participation seems promising, but you need to understand where to draw the line in different phases of the lessons. Balancing is the key.

What type of knowledge are you looking to share with your students? If you are simply looking for something procedural with no critical thinking aspects, then rote is what you are looking for, but in my opinion it is not going to last much longer than the test. If you want your students to really engage with their learning, then they need to engage with your teaching. Discussion based teaching is much more promising for student interaction and for getting the students to apply what you are teaching them to the outside world and their real lives.

“Discussion ignites the mind, while rote learning merely fills it.”

Teaching by discussion encourages critical thinking and deeper understanding, allowing students to actively engage with the material. Rote learning, on the other hand, often leads to superficial knowledge that is quickly forgotten. If you want to create a dynamic and meaningful learning experience for your learners, you need to foster dialogue, solicit active participation, and encourage collaboration. You may also want to incorporate game-based instruction along with discussion-based teaching to fully engage your learners and make them think outside the box, unlike rote learning, which only allows learners to know the basics but not how to apply them.