For more than 30 years, the TED conference series has presented enlightening talks that people enjoy watching. In this article, Anderson, TED’s curator, shares five keys to great presentations: Frame your story (figure out where to start and where to end). Plan your delivery (decide whether to memorize your speech word for word or develop bullet points and then rehearse it—over and over). Work on stage presence (but remember that your story matters more than how you stand or whether you’re visibly nervous). Plan the multimedia (whatever you do, don’t read from PowerPoint slides). Put it together (play to your strengths and be authentic). According to Anderson, presentations rise or fall on the quality of the idea, the narrative, and the passion of the speaker. It’s about substance—not style. In fact, it’s fairly easy to “coach out” the problems in a talk, but there’s no way to “coach in” the basic story—the presenter has to have the raw material. So if your thinking is not there yet, he advises, decline that invitation to speak. Instead, keep working until you have an idea that’s worth sharing.
Even the most seasoned public speaking professional will tell you a great presentation comes down to preparation and practice. La Trobe 3MT champ Nicole Shackleton shares her top tips for speaking …
Dr Michael Wesch, Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Lecturer at Kansas State University (USA), presents an interesting perspective on the traditional lecture environment and its suitability for modern students in this TED talk.
In this blog post, we examine how instructors can support learning in large lecture courses with large lecture pedagogy and methodology.
Peter Mellow's insight:
Don't agree with the title of this article as pedagogy is not covered very well. Some low hanging fruit around performance art/theatre of teaching but no mention of more pedagogically sound practices like chunking (which Don Clark likes!) and simple active learning like 'think, pair, share' peer learning and feedback.
I don't totally agree with this. When I hear the evolution argument it reminds me of paleo diet people who say we should eat like hunter/collectors & throw out the stoves/ovens. Social learning 100% yes, but the lecture is not mutually exclusive IMHO.
I don't totally agree with this. When I hear the evolution argument it reminds me of paleo diet people who say we should eat like hunter/collectors & throw out the stoves/ovens. Social learning 100% yes, but the lecture is not mutually exclusive IMHO.
I don't totally agree with this. When I hear the evolution argument it reminds me of paleo diet people who say we should eat like hunter/collectors & throw out the stoves/ovens. Social learning 100% yes, but the lecture is not mutually exclusive IMHO.
"Don't lecture me" Keynote speech by Donald Clark (with Twitter Track by agreement with Donald) at "Into something rich and strange" - making sense of the sea change, the 2010 conference of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT). Session given in Nottingham, UK, on Tuesday 7 September 2010, at 10.20.
The lecture is 800 years old (Lecture). Teachers questioning students is millenia-old. Yet these staples of instructional practice in K-12 and higher education, while criticized--often severely by pedagogical reformers--are alive and well in charter schools, regular public schools, and elite universities. Are these ways of teaching simply instances of traditional practices that stick like flypaper because they…
a short video summarizing some of the most important characteristics of students today - how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime. Created by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University.
Some students may wonder why they bothered returning to campus. Others are struggling online. But lecturers who do engage students think deeply about how they do it, using all available tools.
With some schools already announcing they will not reopen normally in the fall, and many others considering their options, educators are hoping to take advantage of the summer to improve on this spring’s sink-or-swim plunge into distance learning. Much of this reflection is likely to take place within the often siloed communities of practice in K-12 and higher education.
One source for insights on how to proceed is the cross-pollination that takes place when educators working in separate spheres learn from one another. Insights that derive from dialog between K-12, higher education, and online-learning providers could well shape instructional practices for the better as students return to school, whether in a classroom or over Zoom.
In my 2014 book “MOOCS Essentials,” I reflected on each aspect of the residential learning process and how developers of massive open online courses were trying to replicate those experiences virtually, or come up with ways to keep students engaged without direct teacher-student interaction. This was followed by a stint helping to create a new graduate school of education that required understanding the job of a K-12 teacher well enough to create a set of teachable and measurable competencies that would undergird a competency-based teacher-education program.
From these experiences, it became clear that every aspect of education could benefit from sharing of experience and expertise across educational sectors.
What’s the Use of Lectures? For many, the recent leap to remote instruction felt rushed, chaotic and disorganized. Many things did not translate well online. Yet that discomfort also raises opportunities to question prevailing assumptions about how teaching and learning occurs. Let’s start with one of education’s most hallowed traditions: the lecture.
In his 1971 book “What’s the Use of Lectures?,” author Donald Bligh compared the four things teachers claimed students would get from lectures (acquisition of information, promotion of thought, changes in attitude, and development of behavior skills) with what his research showed pupils actually gained: only acquisition of information.
Peter Mellow's insight:
I still rate 'Reassessing the Value of University Lectures' by Sarah French and Gregor Kennedy (2015) as one of the best discussions around lectures.
Lecture in learning, do we need them? If indeed, we do need them, how long do they need to be. Will online replace lecturing or will lecturing evolve to fit the new online learning platform?
A universidade de Cambridge só planeja aulas presenciais para o verão de 2021. Provavelmente será um retorno parcial, mantendo boa parte das aulas on-line.
‘Desperate’ institutions offer overflow rooms and YouTube live streams instead of a seat in front of a lecturer
Peter Mellow's insight:
Or, if you continue to lecture to students, why not run two lectures instead of one so all students can attend, get a seat and participate? Seems like it is giving students a bad experience in the hope of some dropping out, while the Uni pockets their fees. Education, the student, and learning are not the winners.
In 1805, if you listened to music, you heard it live. Every time. Today, perhaps 1% of all the music we hear is live, if that. In 1805, if you listened to a lecture for school or work, you heard it…
University lectures are traditionally an hour long because the Sumerians had a base-60 number system. It is for the convenience of timetabling, not the psychology of attention and retention.
News that, for the first time, most university students are now spending less than two hours a day in lectures, as attendance rates plummet, shouldn't surprise.
One of the saddest learning stories I’ve ever heard was from the actress Tilda Swinton. She was the only student who turned up to a lecture at Oxford by Raymond Williams where he read out his lecture, from notes, from behind the lectern, and neither of them even acknowledged each other.
Studies show consistently poor attendance rates for university lectures across all subjects. Imagine running a restaurant, where people pay for the food up front and 40 per cent fail to turn up. You’d surely question the quality of the food.
Higher Education values research over teaching, yet studiously ignores the research around teaching. Research on attendance is worrying. Research on why researchers don’t make great teachers is clear.
It’s an inconvenient truth but researchers are systematic, obsessed by detail and often lack the social skills to be good teachers. Witness the 20 stab-point PowerPoint slides, the often dull delivery, the lack of engagement. Teaching skills demand social skills, communication skills, the ability to hold an audience, keep to the right level, avoid cognitive overload, good pedagogic skills and the ability to deliver constructive feedback.
The unrecorded lecture is a strange concept if you think about it. Suppose that journalists read out pieces once a day in the local square, a novelist reads his book only once and didn’t publish it in book form. To deny students second and subsequent bites of the cherry is an act of conceit. Little is learnt on first exposure, most is learnt from subsequent effort.
The only solution is to largely stop lecturing. In practice, students increasingly learn via Google, YouTube and other online educational tools. The lecture is increasingly under attack from superior tools, sensitive to proven research on how we really learn.
We are also now seeing the rise of smart, AI-driven technology which will enable us to learn in different ways depending on how our brains work. Yet few academics are even aware of the existence of these tools.
Note that I’m not wholly against lectures. Students want to see academics in the flesh. To see a practicising philosopher or physicist, be inspired by that person and subject. This type of inspiring, spot lecture is important. Slabbing lectures out term after term, by researchers who struggle to present, never mind teach, is not just lazy, it is dishonest. Teach me, don’t lecture me.
Over the past few years the question of whether the lecture is an effective teaching method has been one of the most heatedly debated topics in the field of higher education. While research on the effectiveness of lectures has been carried out since at least the 1960s, the value of the lecture has been increasingly questioned recently for a number of reasons that include waning lecture attendance rates by students, the heightened emphases on active learning and interactive modes of teaching, and technological advances that allow for the instructional component of lectures to be delivered online.
A new teaching year has just begun in the northern hemisphere. Eight academics reflect on their experience of lecturing, and offer their tips on opening students’ eyes – and keeping them open
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