Effective Lectures: Best Practices

If you’re teaching in a large-class setting, it becomes all the more important to know and utilize some recognized best practices for teaching. With no personalization that comes with small classes, you have little margin for error.

1. Maximize clarity and organization.
Announce your daily objectives on the board and make transitions between segments of your lesson explicit.

2. Do not attempt to “cover” all the material, but rather “uncover” what you can.
What use is it to state out loud all the material if no one remembers it? Better to ensure students really learn a smaller chunk.

3. Create a supportive environment.
Memory formation occurs in the limbic system, suggesting a strong link between emotion and learning.

4. Recognize different learning styles.
Students learn differently from each other, and our activities need to account for all these learners.

5. Teach for long-term memory.
Structure assignments, activities, and assessments so that short-term cramming would not help.

6. Integrate higher-level thinking skills into learning.
Target synthesis and evaluation skills, rather than just knowledge or even application, to guarantee a richer learning experience.

7. Use a variety of authentic assessments.
Measure student learning in a way that is true to the nature of the material. Is a test or essay really appropriate to this material?

8. Promote real-world application of the learning.
Student learning is multiplied when they perceive relevance to the material. Often it pays to start with a real-world problem and “work backward” to the concept/formula/etc underlying it.

9. Require students to become “active learners”.
Lecture halls invite student anonymity and passivity, two features which work against learning. Fight both with constant and varied activities, even if it means students working alone in their chairs.

10. Be an engaging speaker, especially if you only lecture.
Learning rests on engagement, which requires attention. All of this is only possible when students can be convinced to pay attention to you in class.