At faculty institute in January, University President Bruce Murphy mentioned freshmen learn better in more interactive environments and Nicholls students agreed.
One quick Google search will yield thousands of articles, blog posts and university websites all promoting the benefits of “active learning” and interactive classes in favor of the traditional lecture-style class.

Schools across the country have been working to include more interactive curriculum to their freshmen courses. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology boasts small classes and “experimental study groups.”
In an Association for Information Systems study called “Waking the Dead: Engaging Passive Listeners,” professors from the California State Polytechnic University hypothesized that students believe they will learn better by using Classroom Performance Systems. Their results showed 61 percent of students would prefer more interactive classes.

Marketing instructor, Laura Valenti has taken her experience from the business world into her classrooms to keep students involved both in her classroom and in their education. She said her mission is to keep her classes interactive.

“I guess that’s how I learn,” Valenti said. “I don’t learn by someone just telling me facts and theories and just having to memorize it for the purposes of an exam or a quiz.”
In fact, some of her upper level marketing classes are not evaluated with tests; her social media class works on projects for clients throughout the semester.
“If you can take those experiences and make them work for you in your own career as it relates to what you want to do, then you’ll be really successful,” Valenti said.

Even though her lower level classes may not have as many group projects and have more tests than upper level marketing classes, she still finds ways to keep students engaged.
She includes several online assignments with each chapter, and incorporates “social media days” into her lessons. During those social media days, students are required to break into small groups and use their phones or computers to research a company’s various social medias. She is also a firm believer in Prezi, which she uses for presentations and requires students to do the same.

“I present with Prezi,” Valenti said. “It’s interactive, it has a cool factor to it and to me it comes across more professional and dynamic.”

Nicholls students agreed they preferred interactive classes much more than traditional lecture-style classes.
Ann Marie Arceneaux said that her nursing instructor Shane Robichaux’s class is enjoyable because he is clearly passionate about what he is teaching.

“He’s just very respectful of students. He can get on our level and relate to us, but he stays very professional and explains things so well,” Arceneaux said. “His real life examples and stories in class are really funny. He makes a three-and-a-half hour lecture pretty easy to get through.”

Danielle Tardo, a family and consumer science freshman from Mandeville said even though she usually finds history boring, her teacher Scott Phipps makes it interesting by relating to things students care about.

“He makes a lot of pop culture references to explain his lecture or whatever story he’s telling,” Tardo said. “He is also very funny. He cracks jokes all the time, jokes that are actually funny.”

Sometimes it is a little harder for teachers to engage their students with their traditional lecture-style classes.
Catherine Zachariah, a pre-law freshman from Baton Rouge said, “Even though some teachers are fun and interesting, others just read off the PowerPoint and everyone loses interest.”
Valenti said she can sometimes feel challenged because students have not always been exposed to interactive classes.

“I think students really could benefit from interactive classes, but you’d have to know that not everyone teaches that way and there’s a learning curve,” Valenti said. “By the time they come to me, I feel personally and professionally that I’m working against the grain. So they’ve gone through so many years of lecture-style, that when they get to me there’s sometimes a little kicking and screaming.”