Boredom is a pretty familiar feeling in more lecture-based classes. Up to 60% of students find lectures boring according to Sandi Mann who wrote Why do 60% of students find their lectures boring? While I am not entirely sure how they got to this percentage I feel it is a believable number.

Lectures can be extremely dull. While something like a PowerPoint may be easy to make for the teacher it isn’t all that useful for students. For example, from my own experience, most teachers talked while they have a PowerPoint open. From my own experience, I tend to drown out what they say when I am trying to rush jotting down the notes on the slides. At the end of the day writing those notes so quickly just isn’t beneficial. Writing notes from the board might be good enough for an exam but it doesn’t help me in the long run.

I am so focused on writing the notes quickly that I don’t even understand what the teacher is saying on top of not even really absorbing the information that I am writing. While I have gotten used to lectures being a thing, it doesn’t necessarily mean I am a fan of them. Many teachers and Professors will have questions on an exam from whatever they talked about. However as I said previously, I may not even be able to comprehend what they’re saying when I am writing notes from the board. 

Though I am not so sure that hands-on is the immediate answer. For example in many science experiments I did over my high school years I never felt like I did anything particularly exciting. It might be due to safety hazards but it was always a rather simple task to do. All it did was make me feel like I am doing busy work. 

Busy work in my opinion can also lead to boredom. I just have a feeling a lot of times that teachers give assignments to give students something to do. It doesn’t benefit them in any way and all it does is make them busy. Too many classes I have been in had busy work be a big part of the grade. I just feel there has to be a more entertaining way of teaching and from my perspective, I tended to enjoy more student-led classes. These discussion-based classes always made me feel that I had actually learned something from the class. Here, it allows students to have a say in any given topic and can lead to interesting debates at times.