to+lecture+or+not+to+lecture

teaching > presentationstoc

=Lectures = Lectures date back to the pre-printing era when only one person would have a copy of the book - when they lectured they read it out to the students. Now access to information (in books and jounrals as hard copies or electronically) is much easier; this is not needed (though occasionally seen).

**If you are tempted to use a lecture solely to transfer low order information, think again and ask yourself if the learners' time would be better spent reading the relevant material on their own.**

 As well as being governed by resources and circumstance, how you teach should be influenced by what you are teaching and to whom (and why they need to learn the material and why it is //you// doing the teaching). Trying to teach a complex practical skill is not going to work in a lecture. Trying to generate a discussion between learners will not engage many of them in a lecture. Lectures or presentations can be used usefully to motivate learners or to provide information or perspectives that are not available from other sources.

[|smarter lectures] [|summary of experiment about lectures at a university]

Not all presentations have to be a lecture
The lecture format need not be the traditional one of the speaker speaking and the learners taking notes/snoozing & sending text messages; there are ways of including the audience in activities and turning the session into one that is much more active. Simple ways include asking a question or posing a problem then getting students to discuss the answer in small groups then hearing what they have come up with.

An additional way of trying to enhance presentations is to make use of the concept of the learning cycle (see link). In summary, during the presentation try to get learners to recall things that have happened to them, provide a chance for them to reflect on what happened, give them information that will help them make sense of what happened and then provide an chance to either plan how they would respond in the same situation next time or give them an opportunity to try out their new approach.

[|Reciprocal learning] is a powerful technique (proven to be effective) that minimses "teacher talk". Learners in groups develop what they think are the key questions relaing to a specific area, then all groups attempt to answer each question, followed by discussion about which answer was the best and why.

The main thing is the main thing is the main thing
Be completely clear what the purpose of the presentation is. If you are unsure your audience will be completely confused. Everything in your presentation must help communicate the main message and nothing must detract from it.

==If the BBP structure does not work you should probably not be giving the presentation == BBP stands for Beyond Bullet Points - an approach described in the book of the same name (see buy recommended books section). The key parts of the introduction of a presentation in the BBP structure are: <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">1 Where are we (the audience) now? What problem are they facing or what can't they do or understand that they need to? <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">2 Whey do we want to be? What is the "desired end state"? <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">3 How are //you// in this presentation help to move them from 1 to 2? <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">If you cannot answer all these questions then you should probably not be doing the presentation (or at the very least you need to do some research beforehand so that you can)

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<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Links to other pages about presentations
<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Structured presentations are more effective <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Better slides