in defense of (my) lectures

Hello, my name is Josh, and I'm a lecturer.

(And then everyone responds...."Hi Josh").

We don't really like lectures in teaching unless they are our lectures.  Then they are great.  

We talk (blather?) endlessly about "active learning" and moving from students absorbing to creating. How can we reconcile the lecture to our faith?

The slideshare below is today's lecture on "The Family" (a small topic).

Yes...I protest too much.  We do say lectures are great if they are given within a framework that asks the students to engage and create.  My simple rules for lecturing include:

• Keep it short as possible....30 minutes total for me is pushing it.
• Keep it chunked....10 minute segments with an emotional reset for the audience (see Medina on Death by PowerPoint)
• Keep it visual...(words are okay...just not too many words)
• Keep it interactive.  For social science, I like to show graphs with trends.  I think ask the students to tell the class what the "big thing" they can pull out of each slide - the big story.   (And try to push a variety of people to talk).   
• Keep it early.  I always do my lecture in the beginning of class when I have the most energy, leaving time at the end for course logistics, exercises, questions, issues etc. 
• Keep it relevant.  The material must be brought around to relate to your students experience....with prompts during the lecture to get them to talk about their experience in relation to the lecture material. 
• Keep it personal.  Our brains love stories about people.  We love to tell and love to listen.  Connect personal stories with the big (sociological or whatever discipline) trends you are trying to burn into their brains. 
• Keep it fast and high energy.  Putting up the slides in Blackboard frees the students from too much note taking.....the point is to get across some big things that you want them to take away with them.  Focus on those big things with lots of enthusiasm, using voice and visuals as a value add to the curriculum they consume.  

What are your "keep's?" 

Enjoy the lecture slide deck.  You will be tested on this material.

Lecture On The Family

View more presentations from Joshua Kim.