The guest post below is from Laura Prada. Laura works on campus in the University of Windsor’s Educational Development Centre where she facilitates many workshops for students through the S.T.E.P.S. (Skills to Enhance Personal Success) program.

On Wednesday, January 09, 2013, as part of GATA Winter Academy, Laura Prada helped participants think through the process of explaining things effectively. Teaching assistants are often called upon to repeat or clarify concepts from lectures, labs, or textbooks. Follow Laura’s presentation below for some tips on being more effective the next time you need to explain something.

Lecturing is about effective communication, in particular, effective explanation.

Learning how to lecture can help you not only with classroom teaching, it can help you with the countless lectures that go by other names: presentations, addresses, speeches, and sermons.

When you explain something, you want the person to be able to imagine what you are talking about. Use lots of details, describe feelings, include emotions (like fear and surprise). In the example video, the husband seems convinced right away. In real life however, you need to be ready for questions and debate.

Lecture actively: Attention tends to drift off after 15-20 minutes so it’s your opportunity to introduce an activity, a discussion, a video to shake things up. By doing this, students will get a
second peak of attention that would be beneficial.

Know your audience: Don’t make assumptions about your students’ knowledge of lack of it. Pay attention to body language and signs of frustration or confusion.

Seduce their curiosity: The beginning matters the most. An engaging opening grabs students’ attention. During the lecture, students are trying to maintain their attention while making connections to the opening you used. The beginning and the end is what they remember the most.

Begin with a question: A provocative question sets off the lecture as the answer to the question posted.

Get to the point: It is your job to specify the destination of the lecture and help people get there. Make sure they get the point of the lecture without wondering around through irrelevant tangents. Repeat the main points to ensure they’re remembered.

Jargon kills understanding: Whenever you must use it, you should explain it.

Use cues to direct attention: As you come to an important point let them know by using phrases like “Here’s the first concept you need to remember. Listen closely”

Encourage student response: Let students ask questions. Invite students to disagree and object.
Less is more

Create a coda: An interesting bit that captures the overall point of a lecture that summarizes and sets off further thinking.

Basically:

1. Make a concise statement.
2. Display it visually.
3. Re-express it.
4. Elaborate using details, illustrations, graphics, stories, examples.
5. Get feedback.
6. Summarize and re-state the point.

Your lecture should only be as long as your explanation.

Resources

Literary tools work wonders: Metaphors, analogies, examples, anecdotes and stories are all powerful tools. When something does not make sense to students, an example or a story can be the perfect way for them to get the concept.

Use visual aids: The more input the better.

The focus of the lecture is not the slides: If you must use slides, do not use an overload of information. Rather, use them as a guideline to help students keep track of the lecture.

Give yourself options: Have a discussion as a Plan B or an activity in case things don’t go the way you planned them.

Make a case: When trying to convince them, use diagrams, facts, competing pros and cons.

Add some drama: A good one! A compelling story or humour work well. Be careful though, you don’t want to offensive so watch for signs since this is hard to predict.

Don’ts

• Do not leave without a conclusion
• Do not go over time and expect them to stay in the classroom
• Don’t overwhelm them with data
• Don’t have a slide with important information without taking the time to read it out loud
• Make sure you are not writing your slides or visual aids the way you speak remember: spoken English is not written English.
• Don’t lecture when another method is more appropriate!

Cons of Lecturing

Lecturing presents the same content at the same pace for all people even though we all learn differently and have different levels of background knowledge on the subject.

With lecturing, learners are assumed to be passive vessels. One-way communication has proven to be as beneficial as no lecture at all by some researchers when it comes to teaching skills like problem solving and critical thinking.

Lectures are not effective when teaching attitudes and values; these requires expression, application/experience and reflection.

Overall, lectures are less effective than other teaching methods at helping students learning and retain content, and to transfer what they have learned to other courses. If people are not paying attention, they aren’t learning.