Be Entertaining. The lecture classroom is a theater. Teaching in a theater requires a showmanship style compatible the temperament of the teacher. My style continues to evolve but at its core is a reliance on three techniques: humor, demonstrations, and stories.
Humor. I can be very funny. In small group settings, my humor tends to be dry and since I almost never laugh at my own remarks, people often have a hard time deciding whether I am joking. This style of humor does not work in a large lecture. I developed my classroom style by observing other people who were themselves entertaining in a manner that I could assimilate into my own temperament. Johnny Carson was one of my early models. His brilliance stems from an ability to crack himself up even though the material that he has may be awful.
Demonstrations. I have a terrific collection of classroom demonstrations. A few years ago, I made a 45 minute documentary that was funded by NASA in which basic principles of perception are illustrated with NASA applications. For example, the means by which people perceive their own velocity is illustrated by explaining why people’s perceptions of self velocity decrease with increasing altitude. I have audio CD’s that demonstrate a variety of auditory phenomena, and since I relate auditory perception to music, I play a lot of classical and jazz CD’s. For example, using the musical CD’s I am able to demonstrate and explain why music sounds better when it is played loud.
Stories. People love to be told stories and whenever possible I tell them. Studies can often be presented in story form, moreover often there is a story behind scientific breakthroughs. Here’s one: Many students come to class knowing that Newton studied color by passing sunlight through a prism, and thereby, producing a rainbow-like spectrum. What they typically do not realize is that this effect of prisms was known to everyone; prisms could be purchased in toy stores then just as they can be today. What Newton did was show that the cause of the spectral colors was not the imparting of color by something in the glass as was presumed at the time. He showed this by projecting the spectrum produced by one prism onto a second prism that re-collimated the light, and thereby, restored it to white. The German poet, Goethe, was outraged by Newton’s publication of this result, but that’s a different story.
Why Entertain? Class time should be a pleasure. On a given class day, I wake up thinking, "Oh-boy, I get to do the lecture on loudness perception today." Similarly, I want my students to wake up thinking, "Oh-boy, I have Psych 230 today." The motivation for learning is not just to acquire information any more than the motivation for eating is to build strong muscles and bones. We lean and eat because we enjoy the consumptive activity itself. Given that students are sufficiently motivated, they will acquire information from boring lectures, but they will not develop a love of learning, itself.
Prior to entering college, I was myself a reluctant learner. I earned barely average grades in high school and was never a candidate for an advanced placement course. In college, I had some truly wonderful teachers who awakened my curiosity and aroused my passion for learning. I was flabbergasted to discover that I loved college and was equally surprised that I was, for the first time, excelling in my course work – surprise, surprise. When I teach, part of my lecture is directed to the eighteen year-old boy or girl seated in the back of the room expecting to be bored. I want to surprise them.
Be Empathetic. Lecturing is a dialogue, by which I mean that the lecturer and the audience are participating in a communicative exchange. Admittedly, I do most of the talking but the class’s behavior is an all pervasive influence on what I have to say. I attend to the class very carefully in an attempt to determine whether they are comprehending what is being presented, are interested in its content, and are happy with how things are going.
In the Teaching Philosophy section, I discussed how I watch the class carefully. This technique is critical for me. I have often heard people promote the virtues of "making eye contact" when lecturing. It seems to me that eye contact is a natural consequence of caring about one’s listeners. In watching the class, I am allowing the students to communicate both their level of understanding and their current affect. If I am uncertain about their current state, then I will probe them.
Often I will get the sense that some number of students have lost the thread of what we are covering. On such occasions I will ask everyone to indicate how well they understand the current material on a five-finger scale, one being clueless and five being total comprehension. Another scale that I use a lot is the head nod. I simply ask the class to nod their heads, yes or no, to answer a questions such as, "Should I go on? Do I need to go over this again? Are we getting sleepy? Did this example work or do I need to provide another?"
By attending to the class, I have developed a set of techniques that I know will work because they have always worked in the past. On such technique involves the imaginary "Sweetie." In most classes, I describe some wonderful fact or demonstration that they will want to share with Sweetie. I assume that they all have a special someone – I hope that they do – and I refer to this person as Sweetie. The Sweetie examples are used to change the pace of the lecture and to get the students to join me as the presenter of a demonstration, even if it is only as an imaginary presenter for an imaginary Sweetie. Here is an example: Show Sweetie Color Plate 2 in the text and point out that both the blue and red flowers pictured there appear equally bright. Now, you take Sweetie into a closet with you, close the door, and wait for your eyes to dark adapt. (Here, I insert some gratuitous humor about how to spend 10-15 minutes in a dark closet with Sweetie and crack myself up as if this aspect of being in the closet had not occurred to me before.) Now notice that, once the eyes have become dark adapted, the blue flower looks much brighter than the red one. Students love these "Things to do with Sweetie" episodes so I continue to make them up. They are fun, engaging, and help the students remember the point of the demonstration.
Be Informative. I believe that I am teaching the most interesting topic imaginable, that being perception. Perception is where Physics, Biology, and Phenomenology come together. I want the students to gain a lasting benefit from this material. To this end, I try to de-emphasize content that will never survive in memory a few months past the final. Moreover, I attempt to structure the course in a way that will make it obvious to the students what they need to learn.
Lecture Organization. I spend a lot of time organizing my lectures. For each class, I will have only two or three pages of outline notes to myself. These notes are there as reminders of what I need to talk about and when. Prior to each class, I look over the notes and remind myself of what I need to say. The notes provide organization in a topic-comment form that is obvious to me and that I attempt to make evident to the students.
During class, students are attempting to understand what is being presented and at the same time they are trying to get some of the material into their notes. People are not very good at doing two things at once when both tap the same resources, and thus, understanding and note taking typically suffer through their mutual interference. This does not have to happen. Whenever I am presenting something that is new or conceptually difficult, I instruct the students to stop their note taking. I then tell them that I will discuss this material in a couple of different ways until they agree that it is clear, and then I will describe it one more time for their notes. The intent here is obvious. First, the students listen and ask questions until we agree that the material is clear and understood and then they write it in their notes. When I present material that I do not intend to test them on, I tell them that what follows should be of interest given what we have just gone over but that they need not put it into their notes. With a few absolutely essential concepts, I tell them, "Write this down, underline it, and put stars around it. It will be on the test." Having done this, I make sure that this material is on the test.
Tests. Some number of years ago, it finally dawned on me that the purpose of tests is not to provide a means for distributing students along a grading curve, but rather to structure their studying. Studying can be a terrific learning exercise if students know what to study. I now believe that the best way to engender effective studying is to provide a sample test and a review session that discusses it. I always do this and the review sessions are one of the most intensely informative and satisfying times for both the students and for myself.
I attempt to minimize the amount of memorization required to do well on my exams and instead write questions that require students to apply what they know to novel contexts. I write very few questions that ask for key terms and definitions. Instead, I write questions like, "Sweetie has a sinus cold, is congested, and as a result cannot taste his/her food very well. Why has Sweetie lost most of his/her appreciation for flavors?" Since application questions predominate the sample tests, students realize that they must relate what they know to novel contexts and that they need to do this when they study. This requires a more active form of studying than what is required to memorize terms and definitions. Students will soon forget that the olfactory mucosa is the receptor surface for smell, but they will not forget that smell is responsible for most of our perceptions of flavor.