Planning a Lecture

Preparing Lectures

Lecturing

Adapted with permission from Farris, 1985

Lecturing is often equated with college teaching. This is rapidly changing, however, as university instructors have begun to recognize that not all students benefit from lecture, nor is lecture the most efficient way to disseminate information. Originally the “lecturer” read to an audience because access to written material was limited, and many of the learners were illiterate. The printing process, digitalized information, and general literacy have dramatically changed the lecturer’s function.

Lecturing still has its rightful place among dozens of other teaching techniques, but the question one has to ask is, “Which technique will do most to help students learn?” Some topics lend themselves much more naturally to lecturing than others. The lecture is valid for these reasons: to provide structure and organization to scattered material; to help pace student learning; to reinforce assigned reading by providing an alternative perspective or source of information; and to use the public speaking opportunity to motivate students.

Adapted with permission from Middendorf & Kalish, 1996

Being in the same room with someone saying something is not equivalent to learning it. Students must engage the material to retain it. Also, given that students' attention span is around 15 to 20 minutes long and university classes last 50 to 75 minutes, you need to do something to control their attention. Lectures should be punctuated with periodic activities. Many 1U instructors report that when they intersperse short lectures with active engagement for students for as brief a time as two to five minutes, students seem to become re-energized for the next 15- to 20-minute mini­lecture.

Adapted with permission from Farris, 1985

When you start to plan a lecture, first consider your audience. Undergraduate students represent a broad cross-section of backgrounds and skills, and as a result may arrive at collegc with varying levels of competence. You neither want to talk over their heads'nor to patronize them. You will be more effective if you try as much as possible to draw on knowledge they, already have or appeal to experiences that, by analogy, suit the topic.

Before preparing the lecture, ask yourself: how does the lecture fit into the course as a whole? What are your objectives? Do you want to provide the students with an overview of the subject, give them some background information, or provoke them into further contemplation?

Once you’ve decided that the nature of your topic is indeed suitable for a lecture and have considered both your objectives and the knowledge level of your audience, you still want to make sure that what you need to cover will fit within the time allotted. A typical instructor lament is that there is so much material and so little time. Good organization will enable you to eliminate irrelevant material so that you may cover important points more thoroughly. One award-winning ILJ faculty member told us that “I believe in the ‘few things’ approach. Rather

than going through a lot of topics, I cover a few in great depth. Having students stay with a few topicsO provides a longer-lasting learning experience than jumping through a lot of different tilings” (Middendorf et. al., 1990).

Another 1U professor tells us that in 20 years of teaching a large introductory lecture course, he has gradually eliminated 75 percent of the material he tried to cover. He thinks it is much better for his students to really learn a little than for them to be buried under too much.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11