Chaos and calm in the lecture theatre: Transforming the lecture by creating and sustaining interactivity at scale

Abstract

The lecture remains one of the most enduring and contested pedagogical forms in higher education, despite sustained criticism of its limitations for student engagement and active learning. In the wake of the COVID‑19 pandemic, rising student disengagement, and renewed pressures on universities to teach at scale, this conceptual paper re-examines the lecture not as a failed pedagogy, but as an under-designed social and spatial form.

Drawing on theories of social space, interactivity, and immersive learning, the paper argues that the central challenge of contemporary lecturing is not transmission, but the creation and sustainment of meaningful interactivity at scale. Using the metaphor of chaos and calm, the paper explores how learning oscillates between structured, performative moments and noisy, social knowledge production, and how purposeful pedagogical design can harness both states productively. It critiques common interventions such as flipped learning and audience response systems for often reproducing passivity or fragmented engagement and instead proposes a framework of six design challenges (architecture, audience, quiet/loud dynamics, systems, accessibility, and transitional space) that shape interactivity in large cohorts. The paper concludes by demonstrating how spatial, technological, and pedagogical alignment, exemplified through the CONNECTSpace case, can transform lectures into social learning environments that foster connection, agency, and transformative learning without abandoning the economic and institutional realities of scale.