Good Lecturer, Bad Lecturer...Help Please

[Rubber Bullets]

OK so I got this new job.

Well I have had it since September but things are really starting to kick off now. I am a university lecturer, with no experience of lecturing. I am currently trying to write lectures with no experience of giving the bloody things.

The course is science based and so I would like anyone here who is a science graduate or student to think about which lectures/lecturers were good or bad and what they liked or disliked about them.

I fear that some of my subject matter is inherently quite boring and need to think of ways to make it as accessable as possible.

Any help that you can give would be very gratefully received.

RB

 

[nath]

I've absolutely no idea about how to lecture, but from personal experience the way to make a boring topic interesting is personal experiences. We had a lecturer in the first year of uni teaching really boring stuff, but he kept the interest of students by making it all relevant to the real world with his own experiences. Might be worth a go.

 

[Tom]

Involve the audience as much as possible. Although they may hate you for stopping them from sleeping.

I'd watch the Christmas science lectures on telly this Christmas, they're aimed at children but they're still fascinating.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

How many people are you "lecturing" to? This makes a huge difference as to how lectures should be taken.

 

[Bullitt]

Demonstrate, demonstrate, demonstrate.

Lecturers who just told us how to do things and expected us to take notes rarely kept us occupied for longer than 10 minutes. If you can take whatever your teaching and show them physically how it works you can't go wrong.

On many occasions if I needed to remember something i'd recall the demo, and consequently how it works, rather than look at any 'notes' I might have taken.

 

[kingcon]

I’m taking Human Biology and found it mind numbingly boring (especially cell biology) because my lecturer just talks at us and drones on and on. Some overheads are used for showing diagrams but still, it isn’t really fascinating stuff at the moment. Lectures I enjoy have to be visual, although I can understand that’s a bit difficult with sciences in some cases, try and be creative,. Power point is a great tool if you have the facilities to use it in lessons, even with something boring like osmosis, simply adding a funny image (e.g. a funny looking cartoon man looking at the cell) will help greatly for memory and lighten the mood.

Just remember, most of the time it isn’t the subject that makes lecturers boring, its the delivery. Hope this helps. good luck.

 

[Trem]

Wow, well done RB. You da man.

Just tell them about the x-rays of cocks and stuff that you did.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Don't use powerpoint for presentations, it sucks major arse and is really the weakest program I've ever used, it's practically useless, and has a habit of making your presentation about 50000Gb.

If you are gonna do any visual presentations, use swish or something similar - it's an easy Flash creator. on swishzone you can even get a proggy which'll convert your powerpoint presentation to a .swf, so you can then work with it in swish and actually get it to do the basics commands you'd want it to.

 

[moomin]

I recommend

look at another universities course structure and lecture structure to get ideas

Using powerpoint is fine BUT! always make a acetate backup, number of times lecturers fall on their arse cos of this.

Make sure your prepared to be able to record your lectures for hearing imparied, quite a few people on my course wanted recordings. Some foriegn students especiially.

 

[JingleBells]

Make sure you tell amusing anecdotes such as how you were on the verge of discovering the holy grail of <insert subject>, and the cleaner unplugged your machine to do the hoovering. Those always keep me interesting in lectures, also ask questions to people, and walk around the room. A moving lecturer who might spring a question on you always makes you want to pay attention.

 

[~Yuckfou~]

Know your subject.
You need to talk to the audience rather than read to then. Have notes but just prompts not something you read from. Have fun.

edit/ wish I could type :/

 

[GReaper]

Although JingleBells recommends asking questions to people, don't start randomly forcing people to answer a question infront of everyone in the middle of a lecture. If they're a little bit confused at what you're lecturing and you start intimidating them then it isn't very nice.

But anyway, try and add in short written tasks/questions/puzzles in the middle of the lecture, sample exam type questions can be very useful. People don't tend to absorb the information unless they actually do something, it also gives them a short break from having to listen to you constantly. Make sure you're available for the few minutes to go around and help anyone who needs it, its probably a useful bit of feedback - if they can't answer the question related to the material you've been lecturing then you may need to go through it again in more detail.

Hope this help anyway.

 

[TdC]

You need to talk to the audience rather than read to them.

oh yes, please don't just drone your notes at the audience. they can read, give them your notes and have a wee sleep in the park if you're going to read to them. try and find practical applications and touch on them. link abstract things into the real world, etc. tell them things from your own, or another's personal experience. see if you can find webbys on your subject that actually do some good and tell the students.

 

[Guest]

Drink Bells and roll your own cigs, generally get drunk and shag the <21 yr old girls, photocopy the course work and put it out on the seats before the lecture, then read through it page by page. Hopefully they wont turn up after that, job done

 

[dr_jo]

I'm currently studying Biochemistry, and have both good and bad lecturers.

Although it seems like a good idea, making a printout of your presentation and handing it round can be a bad idea. If I don't have to take notes, then I'm not necessarily going to pay attention. On the other hand, I know that if I need to go back over any of it, I'm going to have everything I need written down. Some kind of compromise, where you hand out any complex diagrams/images you use, and let the students take notes may be the best way?

Also about using power point (all my lecturers bar 1 have used it so far...), make sure you don't put too much information on the slides. Put up the basic facts/points, so that we can copy them down, and then talk around them, explaining and elaborating. I find it a lot easier to take notes and to understand that way. If there's too much to copy down, you don't listen to the lecturer.

Oh, and make sure you can be heard! One of our lecturers talks so quietly we had to find him a microphone...

If you can hang around for a few minutes after the lecture, to be available for individual questions, that's always very useful.

What subject is it that you're teaching? I think it probably varies a lot between what would make a good Biochemistry lecture, vs. say computing...

 

[Milkshake]

Show enthusiasm. If you are bored, I'm bored.

Speak in more than one tone.

ALWAYS speak loud enough.

Ask questions as much as possible, don't ask for people to stick hands up, ask the fucker and if he doesn't answer, ask him why not?

I'm always lazy, but getting asked questions makes me actually look at the stuff before I go into a lecture.

 

[Rubber Bullets]

Wow what a fantastic response, really useful stuff from everyone, well almost everyone (Brooky )

A bit of background.

I am teaching a BSc in Medical Imaging, mostly plain radiography, but with some MRI, CT and Ultrasound in the 3rd year. The course is brand new and our first 1st years started in September. Since then they have been doing joint learning with physios occupatioal therapists adult nurses etc and I have only had minimal input.

At the start of February they'll come back to the uni and will have 7 intensive weeks of radiography specific lectures. Lots of radiation physics, skeletal, abdominal and thoracic anatomy and a module called Medical Imaging. As a clinical radiographer myself the last module is the one that I'll be doing, thanking god that I don't have to teach the physics.

I am only part time and will be doing 1 or 2 lectures a week, as well as lab work which will involve the students learning radiographic technique in our own brand new x-ray room.

The lectures I'll be giving will be on subjects such as 'The Design of an X-ray tube' 'Film Proccessing' and 'Exposure Factors' pretty dry stuff.

I can relate stuff to real life, and that'll help and I have also taken a leaf out of Bill Brysons book with the way I'm trying to teach stuff. For those who've read A Short History of Nearly Everything the way he describes cell biology for instance brought to life a subject that my teachers made sound extremely dull.

An example:

When an x-ray exposure is made a huge amount of electrical enegy is put into the tube. Of this only 1% is turned into usable x-rays the rest is lost as heat. The tube has to dissipate this heat before the next exposure is required.

So far so dull, but...

It takes a Kettle roughly 2 1/2 mins to boil 1 litre of water. In a CT scanner exposures of up to 22 seconds are used to get cross sectional images of the abdomen. During that exposure the tube will create enough heat to boil the same kettle every 3.5 seconds. Not only that but the heat will be produced in an area of metal less that 1cm square.

Does that do the job? I hope so.

The lectures themselves will be done with PowerPoint and the slides themselves will be available a week in advance on Blackboard, an e-learning portal that some of you may know about.

My thinking is to put the bare minimum on the site before the lecture and keep all the 'interesting facts' back for the real thing, though we are helped by the fact that attendance at lectures is mandatory.

Thanks again for all the help, I really do appreciate it, and hopefully my students will too

RB

 

[pcg79]

Blackboard? where are you teaching

 

[Rubber Bullets]

That's BlackBoard, not a blackboard with chalk

But I guess you knew that.

RB

 

[pcg79]

america?

ooh its just that my uni uses blackboard... but i assumed it was just unique to there

 

[Brynn]

pick on the students at the back reading the paper.

Something one of my lecturers did was stick up a farside sketch while we were shuffling in.

At the end he just said "thanks for listening".

The kettle thing is a good idea, i hate when our lecturers just say "theory blah", then end. I would love to see how its relevent