Reviewing the Material

Choosing Learning Activities

Choosing Examples

Generating an Outline

Analyzing the Audience

A lecture should be designed with the student’s perspective in mind. What are students’ current knowledge, assumptions, biases, and, perhaps, misconceptions about the topic? In planning the lccture, you will need to find a way to build on the knowledge students bring, and also provide a means for students to reflect upon their biases and misconceptions. The lecture overall should be planned to answer the question-, “How will students’ understanding be different at the end of the presentation?”

Once you have determined your subject and what your students’ needs arc, formulate one general question that covers the heart of it, one you could answer in a single lecture. Take time lo write it down and study it. Then generate three or four points that you could develop to answer this question. Note these down under the question. You are now gazing at your lecture outline.

Your next task is to define the elements of your key points and generate effective examples or analogies for cach. Examples generated “on the spur of the moment” in class tend to be trivial; if prepared in advance, examples can both illustrate a particular point and broaden students’ understanding of the subject. Think the examples through carefully and consider ways to illustrate them with chalkboard diagrams, slides, overhead transparencies, demonstrations, or case studies, any of which can increase students’ understanding and interest.

To effectively teach concepts, we must tell our students the generality or rule and give them specific and carefully considered examples. However, that is not enough. If they are to learn the concept in a usable way, we must provide them with a chance to practice using it. For example, in an anthropology lecture on “ethnocentrism,” students could be asked to list foods from other countries that they find disgusting. Then, you could give them a list of things Americans cat that are unacceptable to people from other cultures (biscuits and gravy!). The value of this type of exercise is that it helps students to make connections between ideas and to create structures of meaning out of what otherwise might be merely a large number of unrelated facts.

Adapted with permission from University of Nevada, Reno

Demonstrating that you know more than your students is easy; teaching is more difficult. Keep in mind that how you relate the material to students will determine your effect as a teacher more than will your ability to generate perfect, complete answers to every question students ask.

However, you will need to develop comfort with the material you are teaching, even if you are confronting it yourself for the first time. Ideally, you will be assigned to a course in the area of your particular expertise, but you should still review material to refresh your memory, and you

might try explaining it to someone else as a way of anticipating students’ questions and problems.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11