Lecturing

A Practical Guide

Sally Brown, Phil Race

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9781135726331
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Lecturing can be a terror, a chore or an exhilarating experience. For most lecturers, at one time or another, it is all of these things. For many in HE & FE it remains the staple form of teaching and, as student groups get ever larger, good lecturing becomes ever more important.

This is an accessible, friendly and confidence-boosting book for inexperienced and experienced lecturers alike. Written in a lively and straightforward style, it guides readers through the art of good lecturing. This is a book to use both to gain confidence, and to work with as the your lecturing becomes more assured. The authors show how to improve lecturing, and how lecturing is a flexible and essential tool for enhancing learning and understanding. Illustrated throughout with fascinating case studies and scenarios and with helpful hints and tips, key issues covered include:

* the place and types of lecture
* voice and body language
* causing learning in lectures
* making lectures more effective
* lecturing tools and processes
* engaging groups
* ensuring and developing quality
* tips for day-to-day use.

1

Introductions

This book is designed to help lecturers, both new and experienced, to unpack the aims and activities associated with lecturing. We were drawn to the topic because lecturing still remains the most common form of curriculum delivery in higher and further education, despite the number of critics who question its value, and despite the whole range of technological means of delivering content to students electronically that are available to us nowadays.

We have populated this book with a group of fictional lecturers (and their students) to illustrate key points in each chapter. Although the words we put into their mouths are not verbatim quotes of real people, the language they use and the ideas they express are easily recognizable, both to us and to colleagues in workshops on lecturing with whom we have trialled elements of this book (our thanks to them; see the earlier acknowledgements). In our combined 60-odd years of giving lectures in higher and further education, and of meeting and working with many thousands of lecturers and their students, we have recorded and noted the kinds of comments which you read here in the personae we use to bring the issues to life. The soundbites were developed by aggregating remarks and comments that we have heard, overheard, had reported to us or read in student feedback, and on some occasions said ourselves. Once we have introduced these characters to you, we will go on in Chapter 2 to review a series of definitions we have received from over a hundred real respondents to our question, ‘What is lecturing?’ After this, we will look at some of the background and context to lecturing, before rehearsing the most important reasons why we have lectures, drawing here on some of the extensive literature in the field.

Next, we systematically work through what lecturers can do in lectures, what tools we can use to get our message across, what activities students can be involved in doing to make sure that learning (not just teaching) happens, and what both students and lecturers can do prior to and after lectures. We then go on to explore the links between lecturing and other learning activities, as well as issues around how to support students with special needs in our lectures. We draw to a conclusion with a range of ways we can evaluate and review our lecturing, before a postscript in which our dramatis personae make a final appearance.

First then let us introduce you to our hopefully representative lecturers’ voices, and to what some of their students might say about them. The characters we are introducing here are all hard-working dedicated academics, as are the vast majority of real lecturers we have worked with over the years. Struggling against the increasingly heavy and competing pressures of research, teaching and administration (and often management), it is a difficult and demanding job.

the lecturers…

Dr D

I don’t understand it. The students have given me pretty bad feedback again this year, you see. I don’t think it’s my accent—they don’t complain about that. The students are very friendly to me in the lab, and they invite me to their Society socials. I just want them to learn the subject well, but they say they don’t understand it. I know my material—I’m regarded highly at the conferences, and there everyone understands me. I give the students my papers too, and I can’t see how they can’t get the hang of what I am telling them. None of them is stupid, they all come in with good A level scores and this material isn’t particularly difficult. I’m completely baffled. And attendance is getting bad. Some mornings I seem to be speaking to a half-empty room.

students’ views…

He’s a brilliant man, but he shouldn’t really be teaching students like us. He is much too clever. He should be working with postgraduates really, since he is going way over our heads.

I make a good set of notes in his lectures, but when I read them back, they mean nothing to me, because I just don’t understand the concepts. He doesn’t go too fast or anything, he just doesn’t seem to be able to come down to our level. It makes me feel really stupid.

Actually, I’ve stopped going to his lectures as I get more from reading the textbook. I find going to his classes just confuses me.

the lecturers…

Professor Oakwood

I’ve always had good feedback from students in the past—I’ve been at it for long enough to know what I’m doing, surely. They pass their exams. Some of them come through to research with me. I enjoy lecturing and take it seriously, much more so than many of my colleagues. But students today are from the MTV generation, they expect to be entertained rather than taught and they seem to have very short attention spans. They also don’t seem to want to put the work in and expect me to hand everything to them on a plate. If I give them all my overheads as they request, they sit there in class doing nothing, so I think it better that they make their own notes. I could go on a course, I suppose, and find out how to put all the notes on the Web, like some of my colleagues, but I can’t see how that will help. I try to get them really interested in the subject, but not all of them are bright enough to cope with the material nowadays.

students’ views…

Professor Oakwood is from the old school and makes no concessions to students. You are expected to sit there in class and write it all down, including really complicated diagrams which you are supposed to copy in record time while at the same time listening to the theory behind it all. It is as if photocopying hadn’t been invented. We’ve asked for backup handouts so we don’t get writer’s cramp, but we always get fobbed off.

I’ve found some really good stuff on the Web site of the department where my girlfriend is studying, so I’ve started to rely on that a lot for background material. It’s not an identical match to what we have on our course, but it’s better than being back in the dark ages in our place where the most complex technology available seems to be the biro!

I wonder if Prof Oakwood has ever been held captive as a hostage or something. It’s mesmerizing watching the pacing, three steps to the right, turn, look at the screen, three steps to the left, glance at notes, three steps to the right…It’s tempting to run a sweepstake on how many cross-rostrum passages are completed in the hour. And it’s very distracting too.

What I really hate are Professor Oakwood’s attempts at jokes. They’re not racist or sexist or anything, they just rely on appalling puns or references to ‘chart toppers’ from the 60s and 70s. My mum might enjoy them, but I don’t! And the anecdotes from the old days! You just want to shout, ‘Cut the crap, Prof, and get on with the lecture’ but fortunately we’re all too polite.

the lecturers…

Bill

It’s all those eyes! All watching me. I know what I’m talking about—that’s not the problem. I’ve prepared it well enough—I’ve typed it all out, and edited it, and read it out to get the timing right, and printed it out large so I can read it without bending down over the lectern. It takes me ages to prepare each lecture. It’s their eyes. My throat just dries up and my voice goes down to a squeak. I start to sweat like a pig. My eyes water and I can’t see my script properly. It’s fine in the lab, I really enjoy talking to ones and twos and helping them get going. They’re bright students and trying really hard. I watch other people giving lectures, but it doesn’t help me. Sometimes they seem to be saying nothing at all, but don’t get flustered. I’m trying to say a great deal, but it gives me nightmares. I feel I’m just not cut out to be up there on the rostrum in Theatre 2. It’s not my place.

students’ views…

It’s painful to watch him really. He is obviously really suffering in front of us. We can’t hear what he says because he’s so nervous, his voice drops at the end of the sentence and what he is saying just vanishes into the ether, even though he is using the microphone. And those flickering eyes. He keeps looking up, catching sight of the audience and then obviously panicking. He shouldn’t wear dark-coloured shirts either, because you can watch the patches of sweat spreading as he gets more and more het up. I don’t think he’s cut out for the job, really.

I like him and he really knows his stuff, but it’s difficult to listen to him because he makes a lot of stumbles, especially with the long words. He doesn’t do that in the problem sessions, so it’s obviously ‘performance anxiety’! He’ll probably be ok by the time we get into the final year, but can we wait until then?

He just reads the stuff out, but there’s no point in being there really as he puts his notes on the Web, so I just stay in bed for his 9 o’clocks and print it off later so I can read it at a more sensible time of day. From what people tell me, I’m not missing much.

the lecturers…

Salima Theodocus

Last person in to the department gets the worst timetable, I suppose. I guess everyone has the garbage to do when they first start. I’d never even done phase equilibria when I was a student. Surely it’s not as important as thermodynamics. And it’s just service teaching—what do these engineers need with it? Fortunately, Pete gave me his notes. He did it for the last three years, since he first started, but has now moved upwards and onwards to thermodynamics. Now it’s my turn. I’ve redone his notes a bit, but they seem fine to me. I guess I’ll get by using these. Honestly, I just haven’t time to go and read a book on it just now—the first lecture’s tomorrow—and I only found that out yesterday!

students’ views…

We’ve just started getting her and she’s useless, can’t answer any of our questions and just keeps saying, ‘I’ll come back to that in a later lecture’ but she never does.

She just seems to be going through the motions. I can put up with a lot from someone who obviously cares about what they are doing, but she seems as bored as we do. How are we supposed to be interested when she obviously isn’t? And I reckon she is getting things wrong, because I looked up some of the things she said in the textbook we were recommended and her version seems all jumbled up to me. Saying that, there were some of her slides that were word for word from the textbook. And they go on at us about plagiarism!

the lecturers…

Louise

I’ve been here 18 months now and it doesn’t seem to be getting any easier. I’m still overwhelmed with work and still only keeping a couple of weeks ahead of the students with the lecture preparation. It was so much easier when I was a postgrad doing a few seminars. I thought I had really cracked it then, so when I got the lecturer’s job, I thought it would be a doddle. But the relentless pressure of preparing lectures is driving me into the ground. I always seem to be up half the night before my big Thursday lecture with the final years, so that by the time I get into the lecture room, I’m shattered. And the technician gets so cheesed off with me if I don’t book the right equipment well in advance, but honestly, I don’t always know when I’ll need a video or whatever until I’ve done my preparation. And even if I am well ahead of myself, I still don’t seem to manage to get my photocopying requests in to the office in time. I suppose I ought to get it all done before term starts, but that is when I have to get my field trials done, and there just doesn’t seem to be enough time. Anyway, it’s always such a relief when the lectures finish, I tend to forget about it all until the beginning of term looms up again like an iceberg coming out of the mist!

students’ views…

She rushes in at the last minute with an armful of books and articles, showering papers in her path and dropping overhead transparencies on the floor so they are all out of order before she starts. No wonder she gets flustered. So we all wait patiently while she organizes herself and then she’s off like a rocket. The only rest we get is when she loses her place and we get a couple of minutes while she randomly shuffles everything before we’re off again!

If I ran my life like she runs hers, I’d not get anything done. Before I come in to class, I’ve got everyone up, the kids off to school, two loads of washing on the line and the supper for that evening sorted out. She comes in late, looking as if she’s just got out of bed and fiddles on for 10 minutes trying to work out what she is doing. It makes me sick that I’ve killed myself to be in by 9 o’clock and she hasn’t got the courtesy to at least be ready to start on time. And then she over-runs, eats in to the 10 minutes we need to get across the campus to our next class, and wonders why we all rush out like rats out of a trap as soon as she asks if we have any questions.

I get annoyed that there doesn’t seem to be any system to the order in which we do the lectures. It would be ok if she did the topics in chronological order, or by themes or whatever, it wouldn’t really matter. And true enough, when you sit down and look at the course handbook, she covers all the stuff sooner or later, but I would be able to make more sense of the content if I could see where it was all leading. You have to wonder whether she has any idea herself sometimes. It’s a shame really, because what she talks about is really interesting and she’s good at getting her enthusiasm across when she puts her mind to it

The handouts are good when you get them, it’s just you sometimes don’t see them until a couple of weeks after the lecture concerned. She tends to bring a big pile of them in together and hand them out in bundles, and you are not always sure you’ve got everything so you tend to grab everything you see and sometimes end up with several copies of the same thing. Then, with the best will in the world, you stuff them into your file with everything else, and then when it gets near the exam, you bring them all out and try and put them into some kind of logical order but by that stage, it all seems so long ago, it just gets confusing.

the lecturers…

Arthur

In the old days we’d never have done this stuff in a lecture theatre. We had at most 20 students, and they were really keen. They came because they wanted to learn. We had time to talk to them then. But now with so many of them, what can we do? I’ve been told I’ve got to give them lectures and I’ve done my best really, but I’m still not convinced it’s a good way to get them thinking about how to improve their own art. Only some of them really want to go on with the topic. And how can I show them things in a tiered lecture room like that? It’s ok for the ones in the front two rows, they can see what I’m showing them. They seem to be the keen ones anyway. It’s when I look up to those further back—their faces are blank, they’ve glazed over. And the ones who aren’t interested seem to always sit at the back—and they chatter. I get really annoyed when they chatter. Anyway, I don’t think my subject lends itself to the lecture format. What am I supposed to do, tell them which way up to hold a paintbrush?

students’ views…

I don’t believe this guy! He comes in with a pile of postcards and a couple of textbooks and gets us to pass them around while he’s saying something about the artist, but by the time they get to us at the back, he’s about seven paintings further on, so it’s hard to link up what he is saying with what we’re looking at. It would be ok if we could freeze-frame him while we wait for the stuff to get to us! And he really goes off it if we try and check with each other which one it is he is referring to, so it’s easier just to sit back and let it all wash over us.

We call it ‘talking in other people’s sleep’! He comes in with a carousel full of slides, most of them nothing to do with the subject he’s supposed to be talking about, and rambles on in the hot room with the lights off. Honestly, yesterday I could hear three people snoring. He ought to realize that some of us are knackered before we start. I do the early shift stacking shelves at the supermarket before I come in to college, so I need something to wake me up a bit.

You’d think that having been in the business as long as he obviously has, he would have managed to master the slide projector. We took bets one week as to how many would be upside down, back to front or whatever, and I won with my guess of 26. He even had a slide catch fire in the projector once. And he keeps saying, ‘Is it in focus?’ and whe...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents 
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introductions
• 2. What is ‘lecturing’?
• 3. Histories, philosophies and architecture
• 4. Why have lectures?
• 5. What can you do in your lectures?
• 6. Lecturing tools
• 7. What can students do in lectures?
• 8. Before and after lectures
• 9. Linking lectures to other teaching/learning activities
• 10. Inclusive lecturing: encompassing diverse students
• 11. How do I know how I’m doing?
• Appendix: More definitions of ‘lecturing’
• Postcript
• References and further reading
• Index