The theoretical lecture is usually two hours, each hour a break of 10 minutes, which means that 50 or 45 minutes is appropriate for the brain of student to accept the scientific lecture. The practical lectures are more dependent on manual skills, so their duration is greater than the theoretical lecture.

It depends on many factors like nature of this lecture in engineering for example engineering drawing lecture takes 4 hours, workshops 6 hours, theoretical lecture 90 minutes, ..etc

Regards, Emad

The theoretical lecture is usually two hours, each hour a break of 10 minutes, which means that 50 or 45 minutes is appropriate for the brain of student to accept the scientific lecture. The practical lectures are more dependent on manual skills, so their duration is greater than the theoretical lecture.

Thank you for the invitation. To me, a scientific lecture must not be too short or two long. Ideally, I consider that its appropriate duration must be one hour. In any case, its duration must not exceed two hours (including two breaks, each of fifteen minutes). But, this is not always the case.

Regards

45 minutes of lecture would be good enough.... 10-15 minutes of personal experience and/or Q&A would stimulate and reinforce the learning of students....

Regards

Selvam...

Some psychologists claim the typical student’s attention span is about 10 to 15 minutes long, yet most university classes last 50 to 90 minutes. It’s natural for student attention levels to vary according to motivation, mood, perceived relevance of the material, and other factors. But are there specific tactics we could be employing in our instruction to keep students interested and alert for longer periods of time.

The Average Attention Span

Despite the popular belief that students have “short” attention spans ranging from 10 to 15 minutes, there is considerable evidence to suggest otherwise.

In a 2007 literature review, psychologists Karen Wilson and James H. Korn concluded there is little evidence to support this belief. The evidence they did find was shallow and imprecise. For example, after finding that student note-taking generally declines over the duration of a lecture, the researchers of one study expressed support for the attention span theory. But, as Wilson and Korn point out, they found no direct evidence of a consistent 10 to 15 minute attention span.

In another study of student attention, trained observers watched students during a lecture and recorded perceived breaks in attention. They noted attention lapses during the initial minutes of “settling-in,” again at 10-18 minutes into the lecture, and then as often as every 3-4 minutes toward the end of class.

Wilson and Korn are quick to remind us that observers may not be able to accurately measure students’ attention spans, and that “while there may be a pattern of decline in student attention during a lecture, the exact length of the average attention span wasn’t determined.”

Attention and Active Learning

In 2010, researchers revisited the issue by asking students in three introductory chemistry courses to report lapses in attention by using a “clicker.” Each course was taught by a different professor using a different teaching method (lecturing, demonstrating, or asking a question). The researchers measured the average length of the students’ reported attention lapses, as well as the relationship between attention lapses and various pedagogical methods used by each professor. The students were asked to report attention lapses by pressing a button on their clickers after they became aware that they had experienced a period of inattention.

The students clicked one button to indicate an attention lapse lasting 1 minute or less, another button to indicate a lapse of 2 to 3 minutes, and a third button to indicate a lapse of 5 minutes or more. The clicker-responses were sent to a computer, and this information was mapped onto a timeline of the different teaching methods used by each professor.

This allowed the researchers to tell whether reported lapses in attention became more or less frequent (or stayed the same) when a professor switched from one method to another.

The researchers found three interesting things. First, that the most frequently reported length of attention lapse was 1 minute or less, suggesting that very short breaks in attention are more common than longer breaks. Second, that the lapses occurred more frequently than the prevailing theory suggests. If the 10-15 minute theory were true, the researchers would have seen a pattern of reported lapses every 10 minutes or so, but this didn’t happen.

Instead, across all three courses, they observed a pattern in which the first “spike” in reported attention lapses occurred just 30 seconds into a lecture segment, reflecting the “settling-in” period; the next spike occurred at 4.5 to 5.5 minutes into the lecture; the next at 7 to 9 minutes; and the next at 9 to 10 minutes in.

“This waxing-and-waning pattern continued throughout the lecture, with attention lapses occurring more frequently as the lecture progressed,” the researchers reported. “By the end of the lecture, lapses occurred about every two minutes.”

Thirdly, the researchers found a relationship between attention and active learning, or “student-centered” pedagogies. The two most commonly employed active learning methods were demonstrations and questions. There were fewer attention lapses reported during demonstrations and questions than during lecture segments. There were also fewer reported lapses in attention during lecture segments in the period immediately following either a demonstration or a question, when compared to lecture segments that preceded the active learning methods.

“This last finding,” they conclude, “suggests that active learning methods may have ‘dual benefits’: engaging student attention during a segment and refreshing attention immediately after a segment.”

The Truth About Technology

We’re all familiar with the argument that increased exposure to technology is rewiring students’ brains, making it tougher to reach and teach them. A Pew Internet survey of nearly 2,500 teachers finds that 87% believe new technologies are creating an “easily distracted generation with short attention spans” and 64% say today’s digital technologies “do more to distract students than to help them academically.” But is it really this black or white? Can’t technology improve attention in some cases?

David Levy, a professor in the Information School at University of Washington, doesn’t buy the argument that technology is draining our brains.

“So many of those debates fail to even acknowledge or realise that we can educate ourselves, even in the digital era, to be more attentive,” he says. “What’s crucial is education.” For example, in his classes, students meditate before lessons begin. Outside of class, he has them spend half an hour each day observing and logging their e-mail behaviour.

Even Kristen Purcell, the associate director for research at Pew, suggested the Pew findings could be interpreted in a different way: that the education system “must adjust to better accommodate the way students learn.”

“What we’re labeling as ‘distraction,’ some see as a failure of adults to see how these kids process information,” she says. “They’re not saying distraction is good but that the label of ‘distraction’ is a judgment of this generation.”

What’s more, the survey revealed that many teachers consider technology to be a positively impactful educational tool. Nearly 75 percent of 2,462 teachers surveyed said that the Internet and search engines had a “mostly positive” impact on student research skills and that “such tools had made students more self-sufficient researchers.”

Students themselves agree. Med students at the University of California Irvine reported scoring 23 percent higher on national exams after being equipped with iPads in class. And, according to Pearson, more than six in ten college students and high school seniors agree that tablets help students to study more efficiently (66% and 64%) and help them perform better in class (64% and 63%).

How Can We Make Use of These Findings?

We can make great leaps and bounds in our teaching simply by acknowledging findings like these. We can see that it’s effective to “break-up” lectures with periods of active learning, not only because of increased attention during such activities, but also because of the indirect boost in attention that can occur during lecture periods immediately following such activities.

We also see that we could benefit from reflecting on our expectations regarding student attention: as we deliver our lessons, we should expect brief lapses in attention, and plan accordingly.

In addition to incorporating active learning into our lessons, we can use technology to engage students and keep material personally relevant.

10 Tricks for Capturing Your Students’ Attention

1. Begin with motivation.

Students need to feel motivated to pay attention. Why should they stay interested in the topic? What’s in it for them? Although you can’t realistically motivate twenty or thirty students with individualised instruction during each lesson, you can try to appeal more generally to the things that keep learners alert—for example, by grounding theoretical concepts in real-life scenarios and drawing on examples from students’ daily routines.

2. Keep it multi-modal.

We all learn more efficiently when information is presented to us in multiple modes, i.e. visually, auditorily, kinesthetically, etc. In their book, Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn (2014), Hattie and Yates write, “We are all visual learners, and we all are auditory learners, not just some of us. Laboratory studies reveal that we all learn when the inputs we experience are multi-modal or conveyed through different media.”

Here are a few resources on how to use animations and storyboards as a teaching tool.

3. Engage the senses.

Italian educator Maria Montessori demonstrated how powerful it can be to let children see, touch, hear, smell, or taste what they’re learning. She found that, when they were provided with materials to enhance their sensory perceptionand teach them “practical, daily living skills in a child-focused, respectful way,” her students “appeared to revel in the exploration that they offered, concentrating on them for prolonged periods.”

4. Incorporate regular free play.

The government of Finland has decided that all grade-school students should receive 15 minutes of free play time during every hour of class. The research supports this method: Analysing higher brain regions following periods of abundant social play in juvenile animals, Gregory & Kaufeldt found that one-third of all the genes they monitored were “significantly jogged one way or another by the playful activities.” They explain: “Without a regular diet of fun social engagements, children become hungry for play and begin to ‘act out,’ potentially disrupting the flow of classroom instructional activities.”

5. Involve students in lesson plans.

The logic behind this one is quite simple: people like to design experiences for themselves and for others. If students have personally contributed to a lesson, they’re much more likely to stay interested to see how it plays out.

6. Target students’ “proximal zone of development.”

It’s a bit like Goldilocks and the three bears: if material is too hard, attention wanders; if it’s too easy, attention wanders. Shooting right in the middle, within what Vygotsky called students’ “proximal zone of development,” maximises the odds they’ll stay interested and alert.

Here’s a bit more on how information overload can shut off a student’s desire to learn.

7. Make them laugh.

Nothing wins attention like a good joke. Students listen to teachers who know how to incorporate humour into their material. Joke about yourself, the weather, the irony of a concept…anything can work.

8. Incorporate the unexpected.

Educator and psychologist Annie Murphy Paul says it’s a good rule of thumb to “shake things up” every 15 minutes or so during class, whether it’s to crack a joke, tell a story, show a picture, or explain your topic using a different medium. “Human beings quickly become habituated to the status quo,” she says. “When something in our environment shifts, however, we start paying attention again.”

9. Make ideas concrete and relevant.

“The human mind can’t handle too much abstraction,” writes Paul. “Bring your ideas down to earth by explaining how they connect to your listeners’ lives, and by embedding sensory details—what things look, sound, feel and taste like—into your account.”

Read more about the importance of relevance in this article.

10. Capture ideas in a narrative.

“Researchers who study human cognition say that stories are ‘psychologically privileged,’ Paul says. “Our minds treat them differently than other kinds of information. We understand them better, remember them more accurately, and we find them more engaging to listen to in the first place. When planning your presentation, think about how to capture your ideas in a narrative.”

I agree with all RG Colleagues. Best regards

hello

The duration of the scientific lecture for students according to my opinion and experience is one and a quarter to one and a half hours

regards

Dear Raid, as mu experience show, even though the teacher can concentrate for a longer period if time, the students can only take lecture of 45 min, and then need a break. Thus, this is a reasonable time.

Kind regards,

V. Janusheva

Hi

In our college we have 45 minutes period and I have been taking classes of the same duration for 26 years. Yes for honours we have 90 minutes lectures for two days.

Activities can be undertaken on the days when we have 90 minutes lectures.

Regards

Vibha

Me too Prof , maximum of 1 hour . If problem solving I can go for hours , one time I was solving Smith charts and went on for 3+ hours !!!!

Just theory I myself will get agitated (no offense ) ...

Again with programming I would do for 8+ hours ....

The standard length is like many esteemed colleagues have said, or a little less, about 50 minutes. Then the student has 10 minutes to make it to the next lecture.

But the attention span issue is very variable. It is affected by student involvement in the lecture, by the skills of the lecturer, in making the material captivating, and even by the time of day. I'm assuming here a lecture is not the same as a lab session, a seminar or a workshop, or other such, where clearly the duration will be extended, and students will be more actively involved.

Back to the question of the basic lecture. I think that an enthusiastic and articulate lecturer, on a topic of great interest to students, can hold their attention for more than one hour, no problem. But one can't base the answer on those few ideal situations. I've experienced three hour lectures, with 10 minute breaks at the end of each hour, and that's rather grueling at the best of times. You come out rather exhausted.

An hour and a half will be enough and sometimes even less than this time because the student will get bored and brainstorming greetings

I think it depends on the type of lecture and the possibility of the lecturer, but in any case two hours maximum is very appropriate

I would say the maximum time that one should straight lecture without any mixing things up with small group activities or class discussion is 50 minutes. After that, students tend to fade out. But if you mix lecture with group work or discussion, then the maximum time can be doubled to 100 minutes.

For a bad lecture 30 min. is as if it were a life time. For a good lecture 2 or 3 hours may be neither tiresome nor enough.

One hour three times a week, or an hour and a half twice a week.

Thank you dear colleagues for your valuable answers.

Thank you dear colleagues for your valuable answers.

It must be not more than 45 minutes.

The lecture hours should be 45 hours and the practical session should be 15 to 20 hours.

At the University of Forestry, Sofia, Bulgaria, the theoretical lectures are grouped in two or three 45-minute classes with one, respectively two 15-minute breaks.

1 hour 20 minutes

Dear Raid M. Al-Ani,

"For me 45 minutes is a suitable time to give a scientific lecture and I saw it is appropriate for my students. "

In the USSR and the Russian Federation (since 1991) in universities (higher education institutions), the duration of the lecture is usually 45 minutes (break 5-10 minutes) + 45 minutes, = 90 minutes.

This is not objectionable either to teachers or students.

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D1%87%D0%B0%D1%81

Dear Sir, according to me its 40-50 minutes.

Our lectures are 90 minutes... but that was not a problem for me. But I think that it might be problematic for some students, if the time table is quite full and one has 4 or 5 such lectures one day. The breaks are sometimes 15, sometimes 30 minutes (if there is not an empty space in time table - this would increase the gap to more than two hours...). So, sometimes only the change of the subject 'refreshes' the brain.

Fortunately, such days with 4 or 5 such lectures are quite rare.

Best Regards

Andreas

The duration of lecture is 1 hour in our teaching schedule . I finish the class in 45 minutes & next 15 minutes is spent on clarifying the doubts & having interaction with the students on the topic . Students get the information from many sources & it is my duty to explain the concepts & the necessary facts they should understand & remember .

Thanks dear colleagues for your valuable opinions.

The evidence from educational research proved that the ideal duration of a scientific lecture is 50 minutes. However, as that students can't stay focused listening for more than 20 minutes in a lecture so even in a 50 minute lecture it is good practice to break it up with something a bit different in the middle.

For more researchers' opinions regarding this matter, see the link below:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_ideal_duration_session_period_for_a_scientific_theoretical_class_in_universities

Thank you dear Dr. Hadeel Saleh Haj Aliwi for your valuable answer.

Evidence also has shown that you cannot have a main lecture more than 20 minutes long. A thirty minutes workshop can be followed by a good break of 15-20 minutes before another short lecture of 20 minutes plus a workshop again. 4 hours of teaching of the same module are counter productive for students and staff.

Thank you Eleni Tracada

Dear Dr. Raid

It depends on the nature of the subject that is being lectured...

Any way, there are different techniques some lecturers tend to use to break the boredom, and to keep their audience (students) refreshed ... like keep asking them frequently, allow them to do some brain storming before give them the information, create some activities like group discussions... etc

hope that helps

regards

Thank you Esmat Wahdain.

Theoretical lectures always take one hour and thirty minutes (90minutes).

One hour and thirty minutes (90 minutes).

It depends on the method of giving your lecture a motivating shape. Attention decreases after 20 minutes, for the first time, than it s adequate to change, for instance by a discussion etc. in oder to continue. So your lesson may endure 45 minutes, and after a short break you may continue.

It depends on the spcific course, but usually no more than 90 min.

One hour would be enough. If there is a lab, another 20 minutes or so.

Theoretical lectures take 90 minutes not more Because students will be bored.

The the atmosphere of the class and attentions by student depend on the interest and inspiration activated by the lecturer. However, it is unrealistic to engage student for too long period if you do not want to encourage law of diminishing return to set in. 1 or 2 hours should be enough. This should be specified in the curriculum.