Lecturing Best Practices

[HigherEd7]

Thanks for the response. Some of us are trying to learn and get better. It might be a good idea to take your own advice:

Use your wit and intelligence to figure out how to be kinder
Senior Member

[aside]

Start with a dance.

Seriously.

M.

You've obviously not seen me dance.

As others are suggesting, the best lecturing practice is to not lecture exclusively.  You've gotten many good tips above about how to engage students. There's no one trick to doing that; the best "lecturers" figure out what works for them. Some use active learning, some are funny, some are fantastic storytellers that could make the phone book scintillating, some incorporate discussion, some make up case studies students can debate in class, some use clickers, some use smart-phone treasure hunts, some are wildly unpredictable and make students pay attention because they never know what will come next, some dress up in costume, some incorporate games, some throw out wild statements for shock value and to see if anyone is listening, some move around the room as they talk, some sing, some dance, some use PowerPoint, some never use PowerPoint, etc. 

[mamselle]

Hunh?

That's exactly what I do.

I wasn't being snarky.

In French class, I have six folk and historic dances we cycle through in the semester.  Students are expected to learn the words as well as the movements. The texts tie to word groups we're working on in specific chapters. The dances come from places and historic periods we cover in the course of the semester. They're integrated with art and music examples and a are part of the exams and spoken practice drills.

In art history, we learn Nigerian dances when studying the bronze masks of the Ibo and Nigerian peoples. We learn swing dance when studying the Harlem Renaissance. We do contras when studying Breugel (there are indications the forms of the folk dances he shows may have been precursorial to French and English longways dances).

When studying the Romantic era in painting and sculpture, we listen to music and watch dance clips from those eras. When learning about East Indian artworks, we see Bharat Natrim and other dance styles.

When teaching dance history or dance ethnology, we do and watch dances in every single class. Slide lectures go with most of these, but in the fields I teach in, I'd be seriously remiss if I omitted dance, and music, and art from those classes' activities.

And for an 8.00 am class, nothing wakes up people faster than moving all the desks out of the middle of the room and starting "a long ways set for as many as will" when discussing attitudes towards music, dance and the arts in 17th c. New England (Playford's books are documented library holdings in many places...).

It's just another case where the norms are very field-dependent...

M.

[Caracal]

Reading all of this raises a question: Why not just videotape lectures and have students watch them? If the effectiveness of lectures is all about the effort the students put in to take notes and so on, what , if any, benefit is there to actually being in the same room? Notes can be taken just as well from a video; arguably more so since the video can be paused, rewound, etc.

Because my lectures are designed to be participatory. I want students to ask question, respond to questions and have comments.  If everybody just stares at me when I ask a question and I just talk and they listen, its not going well. I have zero interest in taping lectures.

[KiUlv]

Interesting concept, but what if your students are not engaged or have not done the assignment, which means they can't participate and the members in their group can't as well. The what do you do?

There's a lot of discussion around "flipping the classroom" at my institution. Here's a link to a different university's website on it as a starting point: https://facultyinnovate.utexas.edu/flipped-classroom

There is also much use in larger lectures of interactive technology. I can't think of the one many professors use (I teach smaller, graduate classes), but Mentimeter is the same type of interactive tech.

I typically use a combination of interactive lecture and student-prepared discussions.

That is obviously a risk you take and the challenge to overcome. Although it's been talked about quite a bit in our institution, it's not something I've actually tried myself. I do, however, have students prepare to lead a discussion each week, and they have to turn in "lesson plans" and I give them feedback prior to the discussion date. They also turn in reflections afterwards. The students really look forward to that part of it (at least the ones who are participating and not leading that week).   

[ergative]

Ahhh, the lecture, every nouveau teaching's whipping boy. How can we sell our latest teaching technique without positioning it against the bogey man.

First off, the lecture works, even it its old-school format. It's the student that doesn't.

[snip]

Lectures work. If the lecture format is not working, check to make sure it's not the student making it ineffective, before dismissing or modifying the lecture.

I'm with you, friend. I myself think that the best language for delivering lectures in is the old-school Latin, which has centuries of academic tradition behind it. My students don't like it when I lecture in Latin, but that's their problem. Lecturing in Latin works. It's the students who are failing in not understanding.

Why should we, as the educational professionals, have to match our teaching styles to today's students' backgrounds and abilities, when it was never necessary before?

[lightning]

Ahhh, the lecture, every nouveau teaching's whipping boy. How can we sell our latest teaching technique without positioning it against the bogey man.

First off, the lecture works, even it its old-school format. It's the student that doesn't. Teachers had to give up on the lecture, partly because too many professors gave up on students taking notes. And when I say note-taking, I don't mean the capture of, disseminated information via real-time auditory mediation, into written text. That's bulls**t. That's not note-taking, no matter what the ADA office says. There are automated transcription services for that now or you can be old-fashioned and record it. Or as my ADA office puts it, give them the "notes," the pptx, in advance--Ha Ha. 

When I say note-taking during lectures, I mean, the student who is prepared (from completing and keeping up with assigned readings and assignments correlated with the lecture), listens attentively, makes connections with the corresponding readings/assignments, asks the right questions, then identifies, summarizes, and connects, and then expresses those thoughts in their own original notes that make those thoughts stick and be applicable to future assignments/lectures/activities/questions/projects--all done in real-time. Lecturing is a highly interactive, effective, and sometimes pleasurable activity, if the students engage the lecture in this way. Yeah, tall order. If they can't do it, screw 'em. Challenge them to do so, after taking some time time to show them what they should have learned in high school how to take notes during a lecture or directing them to the remediation center where they can learn how to be a college student.

Lectures work. If the lecture format is not working, check to make sure it's not the student making it ineffective, before dismissing or modifying the lecture.

Reading all of this raises a question: Why not just videotape lectures and have students watch them? If the effectiveness of lectures is all about the effort the students put in to take notes and so on, what , if any, benefit is there to actually being in the same room? Notes can be taken just as well from a video; arguably more so since the video can be paused, rewound, etc.

Sometimes, a lecturer stops and asks questions. Sometimes a hand goes up to ask a question. Sometimes, as a result of several questions being similar, and showing interest, a lecture can and should pivot. Sometimes a fire alarm goes of. Live real-time does allow for flexibility in the moment, and sometimes you do need the flexibility.

However,

I have recorded lecture videos for an entire semester. I got so fed up one semester, the following semester, I videotaped my lectures. Then I made them watch the videos AND do the readings/assignments on their own time. I used in-class time for discussions, further activities, checking on how they took notes, teaching them how to take notes, helping them with homework, etc. It was a LOT of work. I realized I was teaching remedial college skills instead of going deep into content. We never really went deep into the content, which was what I naively thought would happen. Videos are great because you can check analytics, but I realized half of the students were not watching them. I ended up just repeating things in-person. Soooo, a lot more work for me. A lot more work for students. Complaints to admin because I was getting on people's arses and flunking students. It was a bad scene. In short, you can't blame the lecture and alternative approaches (flipped classroom, interactive, clicker-enabled) don't help either. Lazy and suck can, at best, achieve (using Mamselle's dance imagery as a metaphor) choreographed learning. And choreographed learning is done easiest through lecture (or mixed online/in-person formats, and I've tried that, too).

[Context: I teach at a large, public respectable-but-not-elite research university, and I only started teaching freshmen a few years ago. I don't have the same problems with grad students and juniors/seniors in my disciplinary area . . . if it wasn't for the students that care, I wouldn't be at my current job. But we need the lazy/unprepared freshmen, too, to keep the school running. Fortunately, the lazy/unprepared constitute only half of my intro class. The other half do well, and they go on to do great things in the program. ]

[HigherEd7]

Thank you for the response! It just gets a little frustrating when you spend hours getting ready for class and it is not engaging, I think it also has something do with the level of students you have in your class.

Hunh?

That's exactly what I do.

I wasn't being snarky.

In French class, I have six folk and historic dances we cycle through in the semester.  Students are expected to learn the words as well as the movements. The texts tie to word groups we're working on in specific chapters. The dances come from places and historic periods we cover in the course of the semester. They're integrated with art and music examples and a are part of the exams and spoken practice drills.

In art history, we learn Nigerian dances when studying the bronze masks of the Ibo and Nigerian peoples. We learn swing dance when studying the Harlem Renaissance. We do contras when studying Breugel (there are indications the forms of the folk dances he shows may have been precursorial to French and English longways dances).

When studying the Romantic era in painting and sculpture, we listen to music and watch dance clips from those eras. When learning about East Indian artworks, we see Bharat Natrim and other dance styles.

When teaching dance history or dance ethnology, we do and watch dances in every single class. Slide lectures go with most of these, but in the fields I teach in, I'd be seriously remiss if I omitted dance, and music, and art from those classes' activities.

And for an 8.00 am class, nothing wakes up people faster than moving all the desks out of the middle of the room and starting "a long ways set for as many as will" when discussing attitudes towards music, dance and the arts in 17th c. New England (Playford's books are documented library holdings in many places...).

It's just another case where the norms are very field-dependent...

M.

[Caracal]

There's no one trick to doing that; the best "lecturers" figure out what works for them.

Yes. Trends in pedagogy always miss this. Students haven't suddenly become incapable of getting information from a lecture. You have to play to your strengths and adjust to the students. I like lecturing, and I think I'm pretty good at doing it in engaging ways that make it participatory and collaborative. I'm not particularly great at organizing stuff, which is probably why I tend to steer away from things like having students lead discussion and the like. I'm also not really great at organizing discussion. Increasingly in upper level classes, I do more free floating discussion, but that really relies on students who have things to say about the reading without a lot of prompting and so I don't do much of that in lower level classes.

The point is, figure out what you are good at, do that, and then adjust as needed.

[present_mirth]

I wonder how much of this thread is really people talking past each other because they mean different things by "lecture"? To me, anything participatory or collaborative is by definition not a lecture -- if students are expected to speak, it's a discussion, and if they are doing stuff, it's an activity, and both of those are distinct from lecturing.

[marshwiggle]

Reading all of this raises a question: Why not just videotape lectures and have students watch them? If the effectiveness of lectures is all about the effort the students put in to take notes and so on, what , if any, benefit is there to actually being in the same room? Notes can be taken just as well from a video; arguably more so since the video can be paused, rewound, etc.

Because my lectures are designed to be participatory. I want students to ask question, respond to questions and have comments.  If everybody just stares at me when I ask a question and I just talk and they listen, its not going well. I have zero interest in taping lectures.

That was precisely my point. If by "lecture" someone means essentially a one-way transfer [supposedly] of information, then there's no need to be in the same physical space at the same time. Whether you talk about "active learning" or a "flipped classroom", the real-time interaction is the thing that a video can't provide. If there isn't any of that, then the video makes more sense.

[KiUlv]

I wonder how much of this thread is really people talking past each other because they mean different things by "lecture"? To me, anything participatory or collaborative is by definition not a lecture -- if students are expected to speak, it's a discussion, and if they are doing stuff, it's an activity, and both of those are distinct from lecturing.

I completely agree! I also wonder how everyone is defining "lecture." Part of my class time is more lecture-based, but it's interactive with short activities and other forms of student participation. Not, therefore, traditional lecture.

[marshwiggle]

I wonder how much of this thread is really people talking past each other because they mean different things by "lecture"? To me, anything participatory or collaborative is by definition not a lecture -- if students are expected to speak, it's a discussion, and if they are doing stuff, it's an activity, and both of those are distinct from lecturing.

I completely agree! I also wonder how everyone is defining "lecture." Part of my class time is more lecture-based, but it's interactive with short activities and other forms of student participation. Not, therefore, traditional lecture.

I asked my question earlier based on the assumption that probably everyone here has known profs who actually do stand up and spew for an hour with little or no feedback. But perhaps I'm out of date on that. Has that truly disappeared, or do even recent graduates here remember certain profs who did not interact at all?

[downer]

I wonder how much of this thread is really people talking past each other because they mean different things by "lecture"? To me, anything participatory or collaborative is by definition not a lecture -- if students are expected to speak, it's a discussion, and if they are doing stuff, it's an activity, and both of those are distinct from lecturing.

I completely agree! I also wonder how everyone is defining "lecture." Part of my class time is more lecture-based, but it's interactive with short activities and other forms of student participation. Not, therefore, traditional lecture.

I asked my question earlier based on the assumption that probably everyone here has known profs who actually do stand up and spew for an hour with little or no feedback. But perhaps I'm out of date on that. Has that truly disappeared, or do even recent graduates here remember certain profs who did not interact at all?

Of course they do. Sometimes I do. There is info to transmit and explain. Sometimes setting out info by saying it works fine.

[marshwiggle]

I asked my question earlier based on the assumption that probably everyone here has known profs who actually do stand up and spew for an hour with little or no feedback. But perhaps I'm out of date on that. Has that truly disappeared, or do even recent graduates here remember certain profs who did not interact at all?

Of course they do. Sometimes I do. There is info to transmit and explain. Sometimes setting out info by saying it works fine.

Especially in graduate courses, where cutting edge research means that the most up-to-date info is not widely disseminated, this makes sense. But when the information is well-established, and available in all kinds of print and online resources, it's much less obvious what value there is in one person standing in a room with other people and delivering the same information in the same manner as could be done without them being face-to-face.