A Systematic Review and Quantitative Analysis of Interteaching.
Replace lectures with interteaching—just keep the student discussion—to lift college quiz scores a lot.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Hurtado-Parrado et al. (2022) looked at 38 college studies that swapped lectures for interteaching. They pooled the quiz and exam scores to see how big the boost was.
Interteaching has students prep with short guides, talk in pairs or small groups, and then take brief quizzes. The teacher only steps in if the class votes for a short clarifying talk.
What they found
Across all 38 studies, interteaching beat traditional lecture by a large margin on every kind of quiz or exam. The edge stayed strong no matter how teachers tweaked the steps.
In plain words: drop the long talk, add student talk, and scores jump.
How this fits with other research
Jimenez et al. (2021) ran a tight experiment the year before. They showed that the peer discussion piece is the magic part; adding a teacher lecture on top gave zero extra gain. Camilo’s big pile of data backs that up.
Older lecture-beaters agree. Brown et al. (1972) and Hoffman et al. (1969) found that personalized, contingency-based college classes also topped lecture exams. The new meta says any active format—discussion, proctored modules, or tokens—can outrun passive listening.
No clash here. Each study used a different active method, but all point the same way: students learn more when they do the talking, testing, or pacing instead of hearing one voice for an hour.
Why it matters
If you teach college courses, staff review sessions, or supervise RBT coursework, swap the slide deck for short prep guides and timed peer talk. You keep the same content; students keep more knowledge. Start Monday: give a one-page guide, five minutes of partner discussion, and a quick quiz. The data say you’ll see bigger scores with no extra class time.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Hand out a short prep guide, let learners pair up and talk for five minutes, then quiz.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
UNLABELLED: Interteaching is a behavioral teaching method that departs from the traditional lecture format (Boyce & Hineline in BA 25:215-226, 2002). We updated and expanded previous interteaching reviews and conducted a meta-analysis on its effectiveness. Systematic searches identified 38 relevant studies spanning the years 2005-2018. The majority of these studies were conducted in undergraduate face-to-face courses. The most common independent variables were manipulations of the configuration of interteaching or comparisons to traditional-lecture format. The most common dependent variables were quiz or examination scores. Only 24% of all studies implemented at least five of the seven components of interteaching. Prep guides, discussions, record sheets, and frequent assessments were the most commonly implemented. Meta-analyses indicated that interteaching is more effective than traditional lecture or other control conditions, with an overall large effect size. Furthermore, variations in the configuration of the interteaching components do not seem to substantially limit its effectiveness, as long as the discussion component is included. Future research informed by the present review includes: (a) investigating the efficacy of interteaching in additional academic areas, online environments, workplace training, and continuing education, (b) testing alternative outcome measures, generalization, and procedural integrity, (c) conducting systematic component analyses, and (d) measuring social validity from the instructor's perspective. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10864-021-09452-3.
Journal of behavioral education, 2022 · doi:10.3109/17518423.2015.1100690