"The
Three Es for lecturing" by Peter Coles (Telescoper) --
Peter shares his many years of experience, suggesting that a good
lecture (and a good lecturer) should feature the three Es: Enthusiasm,
Engagement and Entertainment. He concludes with a few words of wisdom from Michael Faraday.
Haley Gomez, a lecturer at Cardiff University, sent me her talk on
"Module Delivery". Points that she makes include:
- Vary the activity during a lecture: talking, solving problems, writing facts
- Engage with the students (be approachable, too)
- Encourage the students to take notes -- this is active learning
- Breaks are important, about 25 mins in (everyone gets tired), but a break need not
necessarily be a break from learning... it may just mean a change of
activity (problem, demonstration, discussion, voting, video, fact of
the day)
- Full derivations of equations do not go down well
- Do not read your slides, use them as a stimulus
- Feedback is important for you. This can be direct (student
questionnaires, peer observation) or indirect, during class ("Did you
understand?" "Am I explaining myself clearly?")
- Good lectures: are organised, are structured and flow. Have summaries, anecdotes and context
- Good lecturers are: organised, prepared, themselves, clear, passionate