Lesson Plan 8

What students had as an assignment: Assignment 7

[20 mins] Part 1: Discussion on Lecturing

  • Connecting with students before and after lectures:
    • Many people think the 5 minutes before and after class are most important because you can talk and connect with students, which can help them be more engaged during the lecture
  • Tricks to increase engagement:
    • Research shows that people who speak once in class are more likely to speak again, so starting class by going around and asking students a question that doesn’t have a right or wrong answer (e.g., what did you do over fall break?) can provide low-stakes initial participation.
    • Be thoughtful about the physical space of the class: e.g., Giving students a table increases the chances that they will use their laptops, which lowers engagement.
    • Configuration of furniture in classrooms can impact engagement
    • The physical distance to instructors matters: The people closest to the instructor in the first couple of rows are more likely to pay more attention than those seated further in the back rows.
  • Q: Have you ever been in a situation where you were in a room and someone was speaking to you (like a lecture) that wasn’t part of a class lecture?
    • Conference
    • Play
    • Comedy (stand-up) or Magic Show
    • Religious Observances
    • Politics
    • Note: Some of these people make a lot more doing this than others and are more engaged with the performance art component of delivering spoken word. It’s worthwhile to watch and observe people who are good at this across these various situations. It can help you think about what you want your style of delivering content to be

[30 mins] Part 2: Discussion of Bain (CH5)

  • Q: Does anybody have anything they saw in the reading that they thought was interesting?
  • Q: What are some things that Bain talks about in this chapter?
  • Active learning can be done in lecture format by drawing students’ attention to questions or novel ideas and observing whether they are participating. This gives them an opportunity to be actively engaged and participate in the lecture
    • Framing questions in a more provocative way can also help get students’ attention
  • Q: What are things you can do as a lecturer to make it clear to students that this is an important moment in the lecture that they should pay attention to
    • Explicitly tell them it’s the most important
      • Variation: Tell students this information will be on an exam
    • Write it on the whiteboard. If you don’t write a lot on the board, the few things you do write on the board will be emphasized
    • Pause for effect
    • Get loud
    • Using some sort of participation marker
    • Repetition of important things
  • Q: Bain talks a little about getting students to talk, does anybody have any thoughts on that section?
  • Ways students can participate in lectures:
    • Raising their hand and talking
    • Voting apps (clickers, hand raising)
    • Semi-anonymous voting via humming

[40 mins] Part 3: Discussion of Tools from Teaching (CH15, CH16)

  • Q: Were there tips on lecturing that you thought were particularly interesting?
  • Techniques for improving lecturing skills:
    • Record and watch lectures back
    • Emotionally prepare for lecture, and form habits and routines that help prepare yourself for lecturing
    • Take a moment to warm up
  • Q: What can you do to minimize nervousness when speaking?
    • Be a little more conversational
    • Think through the different factors that are making you nervous (e.g., are you nervous that you aren’t prepared?)
    • Practice breathing while speaking
  • Q: What do you do when you’re underprepared for a lecture?
    • Don’t apologize for not being prepared
    • Don’t try to make all your lectures perfect
    • Practice recovering from making mistakes while lecturing
    • Own up to mistakes when you make them
    • Work on building your confidence in your lecturing skills

[10 mins] BREAK

[15 mins] Part 4: In-Class Activity: Presenting Active Learning Activities

  • Each student presents the active learning activity they prepared for homework to the class for 10 minutes.
  • Students give feedback on each activity using a shared google doc
  • Common feedback on active learning activities include:
    • Be careful about telling the students participating in the activity (especially if it is a demo in front of the class like a fishbowl activity) that they are wrong
    • If you have students do an activity on their own, going over the answers as a group can help students know if what they were doing is correct