Notes on Lecturing

Prepared by Phil Race, Higher Education consultant.

Sorting out the context

I've adapted the following tips from 500 Tips for Research Students*. I hope they will be helpful for Deliberations readers who are preparing for their first encounters with large groups of students - or even fairly small groups of students. However, I'd like to think that old hands at lecturing can still find something useful here - and, even better, will reply with pearls of wisdom from their own experience.

• Find out where your topics fit into the syllabus. The more you know about what students will have learned already, the easier it is to avoid boring them by repeating things they already know.
• Find out more about the students. Talk to colleagues who are already working with them. Ask them what sort of class it seems to be. Ask about any aspects of teaching which seem to be working particularly well with them.
• Get yourself used to the lecture room. Go in some evening when it's empty, and find out where the lighting controls are, how the overhead projector works, and how it feels to 'talk to the seats'for a while.
• Decide not to imitate the lecturers who taught you. It's worth trying to emulate the good things you remember, but there's no need to do some of the more boring things you'll also remember! Your students will think more of you if you simply be yourself.
• Build in plenty of lead-in time. Preparing and giving lectures at the last minute is not a good idea - even for experienced lecturers! It can easily take ten hours or much more to prepare a new one-hour lecture. It may take even longer if you're planning to prepare handouts and overheads to support your lecture.

* Sally Brown, Liz McDowell and Phil Race (1995): 500 Tips for Research Students. Kogan Page, London.

Getting your act together

• Go to some more lectures! Most of the lectures you will have been to will have been occasions when you were trying to capture the gist of the lecture. It's worth going to a few more just to observe the good (and bad) ways that different lecturers approach the task of talking to a group of students. Make notes of how they do it.
• Remember what it was like when you were a student. You will probably have learned a great deal about your subject since you were lectured to on it. And even then, you were probably a 'high flier' - that's why you're researching now. Think of the average student, and plan to pitch your lecture to such students.
• Do a dry run. If possible, get some friends in to role-play the audience. Even better, try to get someone to make a video of you doing your dry run. You can learn a great deal about how you're coming across from watching yourself perform. Practice in an empty lecture room during a quiet time.
• Think about your pace. Some of the worst disasters that happen in lectures are associated either with going far too fast, or (more commonly) devastatingly slowly. The most difficult job if all when starting to teach is to gauge how long a lecture will take. Try to build in some flexibility so you can say more or less, depending on how fast you are covering the material.
• Think about your delivery. You don't need RADA training to be a good lecturer, but you do need to think about how you can project your voice. If the room is very large, you may need a microphone (and should ask for one). Otherwise you can help your voice to carry by standing up, breathing slightly more deeply than normal, addressing the student most distant from you and relaxing. Never shout.

Planning your first lectures

I'm assuming here that you will already have followed through most of the suggestions I made regarding Preparing yourself to lecture above. The following advice is meant to help you build on your experiences of your first few lectures (by which time you'll be learning fast!).

• Find out exactly what your topics will be. Look at the syllabus and see where it fits in. Dig out any lecture notes you already have, and borrow copies of the most central undergraduate texts on the topics. Make brief notes of the most important parts, and remember to keep references to the sections you will ask students to consult.
• Plan your lectures in advance. Think about how you will lecture as much as what you will lecture on. Students won't find your lectures effective learning experiences if they are badly structured, difficult to follow, even if the content is brilliant.
• You may not need to start with the 'first' lecture. If you're going to do a series of lectures, it may be preferable to start with a topic you feel confident to lecture on, or where you've got interesting visual backup to support your talk. Getting off to a good start with your students help you (and them) to feel better about the rest of your series.

Preparing your support materials

• Prepare some handout material to support your lecture. Handout materials are particularly useful if you're feeling nervous, as you can refer students to things in the materials when you need all eyes to be off you for a moment or two!
• Think about making your handouts 'interactive'. For example, include in your handouts tasks for students to do (individually or in twos and threes) during the lecture, with space for them to write down their ideas. When students have put some of themselves into a handout, they value it a lot more than a pristine printed piece that someone has simply given them.
• Prepare overhead transparencies to support your lecture. Don't put too much on any transparency bullet point lists of main headings are usually enough.
• Decide what students should do with the content of each overhead. Sometimes you may intend an overhead to provide them with the main headings on which to make their own notes. Alternatively, you may choose to include copies of your overheads in handout material, so students are spared from having to simply copy your words from the screen.

Adding polish to your plans

• Build up your store of 'interesting things'. Students often remember the anecdotes better than the main points of a lecture! Try to collect several points which are amusing or memorable, and which will also help to capture students' attention at key points in your lectures.
• Plan to build in time for students to make sense of what they've just been thinking about. It's easy to think that one just has to keep going for the whole hour, but it's more important to think about what your students should be doing for the time.
• Don't over-prepare. Everyone seems to prepare far more for their first few lectures than they can ever get through. Be modest in your expectations of how much you will cover.

Getting off to a good (prompt) start

The art of lecturing is learned by trying to do it! However, some guidelines can help you start to develop this art. The following pages give you twenty ideas altogether. Add your own to this debate at the end. (If you're an old hand, these points may seem like stating the obvious of course. If you're new to lecturing however, they may help you start off more comfortably).

• Don't be late! Make sure that you're at the right room at the right time. You don't have to actually start at the advertised time if half the students aren't there yet, but it's important to be seen to be there, ready to start.
• Chat to the nearest students while people are settling in. Ask them 'How's the course going for you so far?' for example. Ask them 'What's your favourite topic so far?' or 'What are the trickiest bits so far?'.
• When you're ready to start, capture students' attention. It's often easier to do this by dimming the lights and showing your first overhead, than by trying to quieten down the pre-lecture chatter by talking loudly.
• Introduce yourself, when it's your first lecture with a group. Say a few words about who you are, where you come from, what you're doing now, and what you plan to do.

Pointing your students in the right direction

• Tell your students what they should expect to get out of the lecture. It's useful to do this using an overhead, so they can see what you're going to do rather than just hear it. Let students know what they should expect to be able to do by the end of the lecture. Find out how many students can do these things already - and adjust your approach accordingly!
• Help students to place the lecture in context. Refer back to previous material - if there was any (ideally with a short summary of the previous lecture at the beginning) and give them forewarning of how this will relate to material they will cover later.
• Let the students know how you are planning the lecture. Tell them what the lecture will cover and give them signposts so they know where you are going. You might start, for example, with an overhead projector transparency showing your main headings at the beginning of the lecture, and put it back on screen at intervals, pointing to the stage reached. You can use it once more at the end as the basis of your summary. Students who can make sense of the structure of a lecture tend to learn more effectively.

Keeping an eye on how it's going

• Face the class when using the overhead projector. Practise in a lecture room using transparencies as an agenda, and talking to each point listed on them. With an overhead projector, you can face the class when talking to a transparency, and by placing a pen on the projector you can draw attention to the particular point on which you are elaborating.
• Ask the students how you are doing. From time to time ask "Can you hear me?", "Am I going too fast?", "Is this making sense to you?". Listen to the answers and try to respond accordingly.
• Watch the body language of your audience. You'll soon learn to recognise the symptoms of 'eyes glazing over' when students are becoming passive recipients rather than active participants. That may signal the time for one of your prepared anecdotes.

Keeping your students busy - productively

• Give your students things to do. Just about all students get bored listening for a full hour, so break the session up with small tasks such as problems for students to work out themselves, applying the item you have just described, reading tasks, or small discussion tasks with the students nearest to them. These 'interruptions' will help them to concentrate harder on what you are telling them when you resume.
• Use handout material to spare students from copying down lots of information. It's better to spend time discussing and elaborating on information that students can already read for themselves.
• Don't tolerate poor behaviour. You don't have to put up with students talking, eating or fooling around in your lectures. Ask them firmly but courteously to desist, and as a last resort, ask them to leave. If they do not do so, you should leave yourself for a short period to give them a cooling down period. Make your standards clear, and students will (normally) abide by them, particularly if you avoid sarcasm, vacillation and spitefulness yourself.

Get them asking questions - and ride with them

• Genuinely solicit students' questions. Don't just ask 'any questions' as you are picking up your papers at the end of a class. Treat students' questions with courtesy even if they seem very basic to you. Repeat the question so all students can hear, and then answer in a way that doesn't make the questioner feel stupid. Students' questions in lectures are often a good gauge of what they are learning, so value them.
• Don't waffle when stuck! Don't try to bluff your way out of it if you don't know the answers to some of the questions. Tell the questioners that you'll find out the answers to their questions before your next lecture with them - they'll respect you more for this than for trying to invent an answer.
• Ask questions of your audience. Ask the question first, then pick on a student either by pointing, or (if you know them) quoting their name. This means that everyone should be thinking of their answer to your question, and not just the person you happen to end up asking.

Coming towards an end

• Don't feel you've got to keep going for the full hour. Sometimes you will have said all you need to say, and still have ten or fifteen minutes in hand. Don't feel you have to waffle on. It may come as a surprise to you, but your students may be quite pleased to finish early occasionally!
• Have things for students to do at the end. If you find that you're finished with time to spare, you may like to give students a final task, such as making a 5-minute summary or mind-map of your lecture, and comparing with their neighbours' attempts.
• Bring your lecture to a solid ending. Keep an eye on the time, and when there are only about 5 minutes to go, start summing up and reminding your students what the principal learning points were from your lecture.
• Be your own critical friend. Within an hour or two of each lecture you give, try to find five minutes to jot down your own notes about what went well, and what could have gone better.