How to Make Lectures
More Engaging

Why We Conducted This Survey

The conversation around student engagement typically happens without students. Educators discuss teaching strategies, administrators review attendance metrics, and edtech companies build tools based on assumptions about what learners need. But rarely does anyone ask students directly: what actually makes you pay attention in a lecture?

We decided to change that. Between October and December 2025, our research team conducted an extensive survey of 527 undergraduate and graduate students across 47 universities in 12 countries spanning North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania. The survey included 34 questions covering lecture format preferences, attention patterns, interaction styles, technology use, and learning outcomes.

The findings were often surprising. Students don't want entertainment — they want agency, feedback, and relevance. The gap between what educators assume students want and what students actually report wanting is significant. Here are the six most important themes that emerged.

78% ranked real-time participation as the #1 engagement factor

The most striking finding in our survey was how consistently students valued active participation over passive consumption. When asked “What would make your lectures more engaging?”, the top response was not “better slides” or “more humor” — it was real-time polls, quizzes, and live Q&A.

78% of respondents rated real-time interaction as “very important” or “essential” for engagement. This held true across disciplines — from computer science to history, from medical students to fine arts majors.

This is a critical distinction. Students don't want their lecturers to become entertainers. They want to do something during lectures rather than sit passively for 50 to 90 minutes. The desire is for participation, not performance.

“I don't need my professor to be funny. I just need a reason to stay focused. When there's a quiz coming up every 10 minutes, I actually listen because I know I'll need the information.”

Anonymous live Q&A ranked second at 73%, which signals something important: many students want to engage but feel inhibited by the social dynamics of a 200-person lecture hall. Anonymity removes that barrier.

65% want control over their learning pace

The second major theme was learner agency — the feeling of being in control of one's own learning experience. 65% of respondents said they wanted the ability to control pacing: to pause, rewind, skip ahead, or revisit specific sections of a lecture.

This doesn't mean students want to skip class. It means they're acutely aware that a one-size-fits-all pace leaves most people behind — or bored.

When we dug deeper in follow-up interviews, a pattern emerged: students want choice architecture, not total freedom. They want structured options — choose which problem set to work on, vote on which topic to explore next, decide whether to work individually or in pairs.

“In my best class, the professor lets us vote on which case study to discuss. It sounds small, but knowing I had a say makes me actually prepare for the session.”

This aligns with self-determination theory, which holds that autonomy is one of three fundamental psychological needs (alongside competence and relatedness). When students feel they have agency over their learning, their intrinsic motivation increases measurably.

82% said instant feedback helps them learn and stay motivated

This was the single highest-rated factor in our entire survey. 82% of students said that receiving immediate feedback — knowing whether their answer was right or wrong, and why — significantly improved both their retention and their motivation to keep paying attention.

The contrast between what students need and what they get is stark. While 82% say instant feedback matters, 91% report that they typically wait days or weeks for any feedback on their understanding. In traditional lectures, students often don't discover gaps in their knowledge until the midterm exam — by which point it's too late.

This feedback gap has a compounding effect. When a student misunderstands a concept in week 3 and doesn't find out until week 8, every subsequent concept built on that foundation is compromised. Immediate feedback — even something as simple as a quick poll with the correct answer shown afterward — can prevent this cascade of misunderstanding.

“In my organic chemistry class, the professor started doing clicker questions. I realized in week 2 that I'd completely misunderstood reaction mechanisms. If I'd waited until the exam, I would have failed.”

Students also reported that seeing class-wide results was valuable. Knowing that 60% of the class got a question wrong made them feel less isolated in their confusion and more willing to ask clarifying questions.

Attention drops sharply after 12–18 minutes of continuous lecturing

When asked “How long can you maintain full attention during a continuous lecture?”, the results were humbling for anyone who lectures for 50 minutes straight.

The data clearly shows a critical drop-off between 15 and 20 minutes. At the 15-minute mark, 72% of students report maintaining focus. By 20 minutes, that number plummets to 49%. By 30 minutes, only 22% are still fully engaged.

This aligns with decades of cognitive load research, but our survey added a nuance: a brief interruption resets the clock. Students who experienced lectures with built-in pauses — a quick poll, a 60-second think-pair-share, even a 30-second reflection prompt — reported sustaining attention for significantly longer total periods.

“My biology professor breaks the lecture into three 15-minute chunks with a quick question in between. I retain so much more compared to my 90-minute economics lecture where nothing happens.”

71% prefer lectures that blend video, text, diagrams, and live demonstration

Students overwhelmingly prefer lectures that use multiple formats rather than a single medium. 71% indicated that a mix of short video clips, diagrams, live demonstrations, and annotated slides was their ideal lecture format.

Crucially, this is not about production quality. Students were not asking for Hollywood-level video. They wanted variety in how information is presented — a diagram to explain a process, a 2-minute video clip to show a real-world example, a live demonstration to make concepts tangible.

One of the most interesting patterns we found was the preference for “progressive reveal” over pre-made slides. 59% of students preferred slides where content appears step-by-step (animated bullet points, diagrams built in real time) over slides that display all information at once. The reason is cognitive load: progressive reveal lets students process one idea before the next appears.

“The worst is when a professor puts a slide with 8 bullet points on screen and starts reading through them. My brain just shuts off. When they build the slide piece by piece, I can actually follow along.”

69% said brief peer discussions during lectures improved their understanding

The final major theme was the power of peer-to-peer interaction within lectures. 69% of students reported that short discussion moments with a neighbor — even just 60 to 90 seconds — significantly improved their understanding of the material.

This supports the well-established think-pair-share pedagogical technique, but our data reveals why it works from the student perspective:

Interestingly, students distinguished between structured and unstructured discussion. Open “turn to your neighbor and discuss” prompts were rated lower (42% helpful) than targeted prompts like “explain to your partner why answer B is wrong” (71% helpful). Structure matters.

“In large lectures, I feel invisible. But when the professor says 'explain this concept to the person next to you,' suddenly I'm part of the class. It only takes a minute but it changes the whole dynamic.”

Regional Differences Worth Noting

While the core themes were consistent across geographies, we did observe some meaningful regional variations:

These variations remind us that engagement is culturally contextual. While the underlying cognitive principles are universal, the best implementation of these principles should account for local norms and access patterns.

Limitations and Methodology Notes

We want to be transparent about what this survey can and cannot tell us. This was a self-reported questionnaire, not a controlled experiment. Students reported on their preferences and perceived experiences, which may differ from measured learning outcomes.

Despite these limitations, the consistency of themes across regions, disciplines, and institution types gives us confidence that the core findings reflect genuine student preferences. We encourage researchers to build on this work with controlled studies that measure actual learning outcomes.