Lecturing

Self-Assessment Question:

Do you need to know how to make your lectures more organized and/or more interesting?

Quick Take:

Lecturing is clearly the most frequently used form of teaching, but it is also frequently used poorly. The two biggest complaints about poor lectures are: "They aren't organized" and "They aren't interesting." How to solve these problems? The following three strategies should provide significant improvement.

I. Plan your lectures more carefully. A common but poor approach to planning a lecture is to assemble everything one knows about a topic, and then put it into a quickly organized outline. A better approach is to give careful thought to the following four aspects of a lecture.

A. Purpose (or function): There are several different primary purposes of a lecture; which is yours? Ask yourself: What is the primary "result" you want students to leave your lecture with? An outline of the topic? Being able to remember 1-3 key principles? Being able to solve certain problems?
You need to be very clear about your purpose, or else your students will never know what you want them to get from the lecture, really.
B. Structure:

1. What would be a good way to start your lecture?
With a story? A demonstration? A question?
2. How can you build the middle, between the beginning and the end of the lecture?
By presenting organized information?
By presenting a series of problems or questions?
3. What would be a good way to end your lecture?
By you reviewing the material? Asking a student to summarize?
With a story that ties it all together?

C. Content: What information and concepts do students need, in order to achieve the primary purpose(s) of the course? Most lectures suffer from "information overload": more information than students can really understand and/or know how to use. Hence one needs to be selective. What is critically important, and what is not?
D. Make it interesting: Make plans to add aspects that make any lecture more interesting:

· Audio-visuals (e.g., sound recordings, slides, overheads, Power Point)
· Narratives (stories about others, stories about yourself)
· Humor
· Paraphernalia (bring "things" to class, to prompt discussion or illustrate a point)
· Periodic breaks to have students "do" something besides take notes (e.g., discuss in small groups, role play, solve a problem).

II. Improve your delivery of the lecture.
A good lecture is a "meaningful engagement" between someone and his/her audience. Hence it is similar to, and depends on the same devices as, good drama: well-planned content with dramatic delivery (see Ref. #5 below). More dramatic delivery refers to such things as:

· eye contact: engage your students by looking them in the eye; make eye contact with as many students as possible · voice: relax your voice, vary the pitch, pace, and loudness
· facial expression: vary your express to fit your meaning, e.g., showing intensity, humor, curiosity, doubt, etc.
· gestures: use your arms and hands to express your meaning
· movement: move around the room, up and down the aisles if possible, use a cordless microphone if necessary.

Many good lecturers audio-tape or video-tape their own lectures, and then study them for effectiveness of delivery. They also observe the delivery of other lecturers, both good and poor, in order to clarify and extend their own ideas on what makes some lectures more effective than others.

III. "Break it up": Do something besides lecture all the time
Good lecturers know when to stop lecturing and do something else, meaning "have the audience do something besides 'sit and listen.'" The "Enhanced Lecture" (see reference #3 below) is a list of 4 options for making a lecture less tedious. The basic idea is to divide your lecture into 10-20 minute segments, and then have students do something between segments for 3-10 minutes. The variation among the four options is what students do between lecture segments: write notes on the lecture, discuss a question in small groups, solve a problem, or take a short quiz.

You can also use class discussions (whole class or in small groups), writing activities, and/or role play as a periodic alternative to continuous lecturing.

Basically these are all strategies for incorporating a degree of active learning into a teaching format that is still centered on the lecture. This helps students re-gain their mental energy, thereby increasing their attention, understanding and retention.

References:

1. "Lecture Strategies," Section IV in Tools for Teaching by Barbara Davis. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993. Has six chapters on "Lecture Strategies." Three key ones are: Chap. 13: "Delivering a Lecture," Chap. 14: "Explaining Clearly,"
Chap. 16: "Supplements and Alternatives to Lecturing: Encouraging Student Participation."

2. "Lecturing", Chapter 5 in Teaching Tips, 9th edition, by Wilbert J. McKeachie. Lexington, Mass.: Heath, 1994. Offers a nice mixture of theory, research and sage advice.

3. "Lectures: Organizing Them and Making Them Interesting," by Dr. Arletta B. Knight. www.ou.edu/idp/lectures.html. Everyone "knows" that lectures should be organized and interesting, but still most people don't know how to make them that way. This webpage offers a number of specific, concrete recommendations for these two tasks. Includes an appendix describing "The Enhanced Lecture" which is adapted from ideas in Bonwell and Eison, Active Learning.

4. Mastering the Techniques of Teaching, 2nd edition, by Joseph Lowman. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995. Has two chapters that offer advice on lecturing: Chap. 4: "Analyzing and Improving Classroom Performance," Chap. 5: "Selecting and Organizing Material for Class Presentations."

5. Teaching and Performing: Ideas for energizing your classes, edited by William M. Timpson. Madison, WI: Atwood, 1997. Draws on the theater arts to identify numerous parallels and suggestions for making public presentations more dramatic and more energetic. Offers ideas on: warming up, the lecture [with specific comments on such things as pacing, voice, props, lighting, etc.], energy, creativity, spontaneity, development, discovery, drama.