7 THINGS EVERY LECTURE NEEDS TO BE AWESOME

Lecture halls can be very annoying at times. These days, students crave for the slightest opportunities to forfeit as many lecture meetings as possible because of the boredom being experienced during lectures. The uninteresting meeting can affect both parties greatly, that is, the lecturer and the lectured.

On one side, you have a lecturer trying to pass information to a set of listeners that are barely ready to listen to him or her, and sometimes a good number of them are fast asleep. On the other end, there is a set of listeners that had lost focus on the lecture at hand, and are being distracted by the slightest form of distraction in their milieu. Once, I was sitting next to a student in a seminar organised for students. While one of the speakers was busy passing his message, my neighbor, the student, was busy sketching a picture of the speaker; having lost interest in the speech being given. I suppose the student has lost quite a lot of things doing that.

Nevertheless, I have also attended seminars where the listeners wanted more and more from the speaker. The lecturer might not totally quench the thirst of his listeners during lecture, but he or she has dropped some things that gave the audience a happy ending. In my years of experience, I can tell that two lecturers will lecture on a topic, to the same set of listeners, and get two different reactions of a happy and sad ending. What then gives a lecture the super spice that gives the listeners a happy end?

For every lecture, there are seven fundamental ingredients that give the status “great” to the lecture.

• THE LISTENERS INTEREST

If this ingredient is made of the right quality and provided in the right quantity, then the most important part of a good lecture is settled. Provided the listeners have interest in your topic, they are very likely to enjoy your lecture. Sometimes your listeners might not have interest in your topic per se, what then should you do about that?

Since the listener’s interest is of utmost priority, the lecturer has to sell the idea that the topic he or she is about to take up is interesting. One of the best ways to achieve this is by relating the given topic to your listener’s life activities; take it to them and put them in exemplary positions if necessary. Do everything to get them interested because, their interest has a strong role to play in the awesomeness of your lecture.

• TEACHER’S KNOWLEDGE AND COMMUNICATION SKILL

As for me, the other reason I will stay to the end of a lecture, excluding the interest factor, is if I get the impression that you have more to tell me than I have already gotten. Every lecturer should have a robust knowledge of what they are going to lecture on. Get into every detail available when preparing for your lecture. You should know your topic very well for two main reasons;

1.      So that you will pass, as much as possible, every needed knowledge concerning your topic, to your audience.

2.       So that you will give satisfactory answers to questions that may come from the audience.

Your communication skill is also a vital tool to keep the audience. If you do not know how to relate what you have in your paper or head to your audience, it will affect your lecture. For you to give an awesome lecture, your ability to communicate is very essential. If you are weak at communicating, you might as well just put your lecture aside and learn that first. It is evident that it is not everyone with knowledge that can talk to make sense, but everyone that is good at communicating tends to make sense.

To summarize on this ingredient, I will simply suggest that you build a stronghold on the topic you are to take, and make your audience know what they should know.

• LENGTH OF LECTURE

Whatever you do, avoid lengthy lectures. I know you may have so much to say but, try as much as possible to shorten your lecture. People are not willing to sit for too long listening to someone talking and talking (unless it is something entertaining). More often than not, most lectures are appropriated time duration, so I advise that you, as a lecturer, should schedule time for the different segments of your lecture. This will help you manage your time well. Many lectures that exceeded their appropriated time either reduced the interest of the audience, or worsened the initial state of “lack of interest”.

• PIECE OF JOKE

In situations where lectures have to be unavoidably lengthy for the best information to be passed, the remedy might just be the joke ingredient. As a matter of fact, you should not wait for your lecture to be lengthy before you insert one or more funny moment, and if they must be lengthy, then you should not miss the part where jokes are employed. Funny moment reduces stress and makes the audience feel more at home. They get to stretch their bodies and change positions when they laugh. More importantly, they begin to fall in love with you, thereby, developing interest in what you want to tell them. Learn how to construct your jokes so that it will suit your lecture.

• QUESTION AND ANSWER SECTION

Let the thought of satisfaction from the side of your audience never come into your mind until you have asked and answered questions from your audience. Get to ask questions and allow your audience to ask you questions too and you might be surprised at the response you will get. One of the segments of your lecture you should appropriate time to is the question and answer segment. The section might help the lecturer to touch areas of the lecture he or she did not cover during presentation. It is also because of this section that I advise lecturers to prepare very well before lectures. Just believe that there is someone in the crowd that has not gotten your gist, until no one has a question to ask you.

• ASSIGNMENT

To ensure that your audience understands your lecture, give them a task or assignment. You may not give them assignments that you will have to examine later, especially in cases of one-time lectures, but one or more homework will help them to understand you better on their own. For example, a lecture on innovation should task the listeners to go back home and think out ways to become innovative. Assignments, sometimes, imposes itself on the listener provided the lecture was impressive. As for classroom lectures, assignments are really necessary. They help the student to understand better and the lecturer to examine his or her impact on the student.

• REWARD FOR EXCELLENCE

When assignments are given, it will become more interesting if very impressive replies are being awarded. Telling your listeners that you have a reward for an impressive performance from them will make them embark on research on your topic. They will get to develop their interest better and acquire more knowledge. The reward ingredient is not usually applicable in situations where the lecturer gets to just do his lecture once and for all, but if it can be employed, good and fine. It is usually best in cases where the lecturer gets to come back; like classroom lectures. The reward could be material or immaterial; the idea is that there is special recognition given to excellent performance.

Every topic is interesting; people think otherwise because of the poor way the topic has been presented to them. There might be some other ingredients that will make your lectures interesting and awesome, but I believe a consolidation and right application of these listed ingredients will give lectures a happy ending.