So the first thing that I really stress that people do, is that they actually go and watch some classes. I think that’s the most important thing. When they’re coming straight out of a post doc, or they’re coming straight out of the Research Centre, and then, they’re told they’re going to be lecturing 300 first year students, they’ve got to go and sit in the back of the lecture theatres for a few weeks....
So I think we just, I used to give them, perhaps, 10 minutes to work on a problem, now I probably only give them two or three minutes. I find that concentrates them and prevents them just talking about the State of Origin or whatever it is that’s on their mind. We just need to keep changing the activity, rather than have extended activities... we want them to chat, but I think human beings won’t sit and chat about quantum mechanics for more than two or three minutes, they’ll get onto what they want for lunch. So it’s that balance.
So, just to make them do some work, and made them think about the ideas themselves. Talk amongst themselves about it. I think that just too much of me in the lecture just washes over them after five to 10 minutes. So they just need to have a break, think about the problem, do a couple of problems, talk amongst themselves... that seems to help, with both the variety of students in the class, but also just keeping them engaged. Keeping their attention.
So you shouldn’t be rigid, you shouldn’t be rigid in what you’re going to do. It’s always stunned me that people say you should know where you start a lecture and where you’re going to finish, and if you get to that point and you finish ten minutes early you then should just finish. I’ve never worked on that principle. I never know where I’m going to start because I never know where I’m going to finish, right. So where I finished the lecture before is where I start the next day, I haven’t got a set content. If a student asks me an interesting question and I get the feeling that they wa
You could identify people and you use it in a constructive way. But if you could show some identity, that you’re not a remote person up the front, that the big class is not anonymous, it just helps to break down that barrier. And once they trust you and once they like coming, that solves a lot of other problems - behavioural problems, learning problems and so on.
But if you’re honest, they’ll be honest right. And I think that’s really important. If you b*gger something up and you really do make a blue or even a little blue, tell them. Say ‘oh look this was wrong, you know this is what it should be’. So that’s important - to be honest, to be upfront. Recognise that we’re dealing, in 2015 or 2014, we’re dealing with OP1 to maybe 14. Recognise the breadth of that class.
At the start of every class my standard thing was ‘can you see me, can you hear me, can you see the slide?’ I would always look up the back for someone to put their hand up and always I would never talk to the front row. I’d always talk middle and back row and if someone was talking in the back row I’d pick them up and say ‘hey you, be quiet’ and then they know that I’ve seen them.
So the strategy is to reflect, to change things, to be flexible, to talk to them but not talk down to them, and certainly I would say to any young lecturer don’t be writing the lecture the night before. Know what your course is because then you can jump back and forth as you talk about something. You can say yeah we talked about this a week ago or something like that, you know. Know what you’re going to talk about, the whole thing, because then you can put it all together as a package.
