Make Your Lectures More Interesting

Here are six easy ways to enhance student engagement in lecture classes.

1. Capture your audience's attention

Give your students a reason to listen. Just as a newspaper article starts with a lede-an attention grabber-begin your lecture with a question or an anecdote or a joke or a startling statement or a reference to a current event that suggests why the lecture topic is significant.

2. Be organized

Carefully outline the points that you wish to convey. Make sure your lecture flows logically. Define essential terms, recap significant points during the lecture, and provide students with a succinct summary at the lecture's conclusion.

3. Be animated

Vary the pitch and volume of your voice and your rate of delivery; maintain eye contact; display self-confidence; and convey an interest in students. Use physical gestures to emphasize points. Break away from the podium in order to maintain contact with all students. Be conversational in tone. Use humor, since students are more motivated when they're having fun.

4. Encourage student involvement

Most listeners can concentrate intensively for no more than ten minutes at a time. Break up your lecture in ways that encourage student involvement. Role playing, props, and suspense and surprise can keep students engaged.

Clickers offer an innovative way to keep students engaged. Clickers allow instructors to ask questions and gather students' responses during a lecture. They provide an easy way to make large group instruction more interactive.

5. Visualize the course material

Use animations, charts and graphs, film clips, illustrations, and simulations to reinforce essential points.

6. Promote discussion, questions, and interaction

Keep a close look out for students who are confused. Encourage them to ask you to clarify points that they don't understand.