Lecture Prep and Frustration

[HigherEd7]

I'm curious if anyone else has experienced this. You spend all week preparing for your lecture and developing a PowerPoint; during your lecture, you forget to discuss some of the information you prepared for. I find this very frustrating! Using a PowerPoint throws me off. Any tips? 

[EdnaMode]

I guess my first question for you would be, what are you using the PowerPoint for? I'm in engineering and sometimes I have to give the same lecture/demo more than once to different sections of the same course, especially if I have multiple lab sections, so to make sure I tell everyone the same thing with perhaps slightly different mildly off topic tangents brought up by student questions, and me telling slightly different mom jokes, that's how I ensure that every class receives the same content and I don't leave anything important out.

Not everything I say during lecture is on the slides word for word, and even though I change up my lectures from semester to semester, not a lot changes about the basics of engineering so by now (am just starting my 11th year out of industry into academia), I have the lectures pretty much memorized and could do them without slides. I still use PowerPoint to keep me on track though, and to give students a basic outline. The slides have the major topics with graphics where applicable, and sometimes equations or definitions I have lifted straight from the book. When I'm doing a demo of software or equipment, depending on the sort of lab I'm in, I skip the PowerPoint and have a handout that students also have, and I go through the steps one at a time doing a demonstration. Again, that helps make sure students in different sections get basically all the same info.

[Sun_Worshiper]

When I first started teaching, I would worry a lot about getting every key point into the lecture and then beat myself up if I didn't cover things comprehensively or left some crucial piece out. But somewhere along the line I realized that students don't retain 90% of what I say anyway and that sometimes less is more in terms of class content. Now I just do my lecture, with some power points that work for me essentially as EdnaMode described, and if I leave something out, then so be it.

I also don't spend much time preparing these days, although I once did. I've been teaching the same array of classes for years and I can give these lectures in my sleep.

So I guess my point is that you shouldn't worry about it so much. Just do your best and it will be fine.

[HigherEd7]

Thank you for the response, and it makes sense. I need to quit beating myself up, and I realize that I will not be able to memorize everything and explain everything. I know some teachers who cover one or two topics out of the textbook, and that is it.

[Hegemony]

I script my lectures for just this reason.

[Parasaurolophus]

If it's important, I have a prompt for myself in the slides. Otherwise, I just try to remember it the next time I teach that class.

[Puget]

I became convinced that live lecturing is just not a great way for students to learn or how I want to teach, so I flipped my large class. It was a TON of work to do the first time (don't decide to do this lightly!), but now the lecture segments are online, honed and scripted to say exactly what I want them to learn clearly and concisely, and we use the class time for discussion and in-class assignments that let them dive deeper, interact, and apply concepts, and let me be much more free-wheeling and interactive (I do have slides for those, to guide discussion, but it isn't lecturing).

[HigherEd7]

I became convinced that live lecturing is just not a great way for students to learn or how I want to teach, so I flipped my large class. It was a TON of work to do the first time (don't decide to do this lightly!), but now the lecture segments are online, honed and scripted to say exactly what I want them to learn clearly and concisely, and we use the class time for discussion and in-class assignments that let them dive deeper, interact, and apply concepts, and let me be much more free-wheeling and interactive (I do have slides for those, to guide discussion, but it isn't lecturing).

That sounds like a good idea. I have never thought about that, and it sounds like something worth exploring.

[HigherEd7]

I script my lectures for just this reason.

How much time do you spend doing this? Thanks

[Puget]

I became convinced that live lecturing is just not a great way for students to learn or how I want to teach, so I flipped my large class. It was a TON of work to do the first time (don't decide to do this lightly!), but now the lecture segments are online, honed and scripted to say exactly what I want them to learn clearly and concisely, and we use the class time for discussion and in-class assignments that let them dive deeper, interact, and apply concepts, and let me be much more free-wheeling and interactive (I do have slides for those, to guide discussion, but it isn't lecturing).

That sounds like a good idea. I have never thought about that, and it sounds like something worth exploring.

There's a huge pedagogy literature on flipped classrooms-- I'm sure you can find something on this model specifically in your discipline to get you started.

[secundem_artem]

I became convinced that live lecturing is just not a great way for students to learn or how I want to teach, so I flipped my large class. It was a TON of work to do the first time (don't decide to do this lightly!), but now the lecture segments are online, honed and scripted to say exactly what I want them to learn clearly and concisely, and we use the class time for discussion and in-class assignments that let them dive deeper, interact, and apply concepts, and let me be much more free-wheeling and interactive (I do have slides for those, to guide discussion, but it isn't lecturing).

This.

[hmaria1609]

Try using Canva. Setting up an account is free on the website and it's user friendly. Slides are among the products offered.

[lightning]

I did the flipped thing for awhile. It was a TON of frustration when students showed up to class having not watched the videos, rendering the in-class portions useless. I ended up lecturing as I went along anyway, in order to salvage the in-class portions. (This, in addition to students not doing the reading.)

Thank god I don't teach those classes anymore. Today, I joke about Flipped Classrooms as Supervised Homework.

Y'know why students still want lectures? It's because live lectures circumscribe the amount of info that they are responsible for knowing.

Y'know why some faculty still lecture? It's because flipped classrooms expose faculty with gaps in their knowledge (amongst the few students who actually engage with the content in flipped classrooms--but it only takes one know-it-all student to expose an unprepared faculty member).

Y'know why some administrators like lectures? So, they can blame the content delivery on the format and introduce their nouveau top-down teaching innovation, and have a reason to exist. Also, the supervised homework yields a motherlode of data that makes data administrators look good on Assessment reports.

[Hegemony]

I script my lectures for just this reason.

How much time do you spend doing this? Thanks

I spend a 2-3 hours writing each lecture, but I have the kind of classes where I only lecture once or twice per semester.

[Sun_Worshiper]

I did the flipped thing for awhile. It was a TON of frustration when students showed up to class having not watched the videos, rendering the in-class portions useless. I ended up lecturing as I went along anyway, in order to salvage the in-class portions. (This, in addition to students not doing the reading.)

Yes, as much as I like my students and as much as I trust a handful of them to come to class prepared, I think it would work out like this in practice.