The Lecture Style

Organisation

Component (part whole) relationships

Showing how a large idea is made up of several smaller ones. Also known as classification hierarchy which groups various items under a main heading.

Signals of transition are needed to tell the student when the lecturer is moving from one hierarchy to another.

Sequential relationships items are arrange in chronological, cause and effect, building to a climax or a con-pro sequence.

The Con-pro sequence builds suspense by the lecturer laying out all of the arguments against his or her position as strongly as possible and then proceeding to argue against all of these issues and therefore buttressing his or her own position.

Relevance relationships. The lecturer identifies the criteria for what should be included and what should be excluded. The most relevant argument is given as the central idea and everything has to fit into that argument.

Transitional (collective) relationships. This technique uses relational words and phrases to define the structure of the organisation of the lecture. These relational words are repeated throughout the lecture. An example would be the phrase "can be analysed" and the words "to repeat" signals that the lecturer is summarising the material.

Comparisons and contrasts. The lecturer defines basis one and basis two. He or she then lists similarities or differences between them.

Combinatorial devices. This is using N times N tables. Showing for example the relationship between men/women and married/single or types of team sports being non-interactive or interactive and considering at the same time the concept of contacts and non-contact.

Organisational networks can be shown by using a diagram to connect various units within a relationship. For example, family relationships could be illustrated with a square with two diagonals, with the labels: mother, father, daughter, and son placed at each corner of the square.

Clarifying the organisation

There are several tools for clarifying the organisation of the material. They are;

Explicitness

Eight-year-olds and fifth graders have been shown to yield better performances on tasks where explicit instructions were given (Van der Will, 1976, Roehler et al., 1986). Explicit means full, specific, definite, precise, clear-cut, and unambiguous. It is not necessary to give lengthy explanations, short-term, more concise, instructions slowly delivered were found to be just as effective as more lengthy explanations taking the same amount of time (Van der Will, 1976).

Rule-example-rule technique. Highly effective lecturers give lectures containing many rule-example-rule sequences (Rosenshine, 1971). The lecturer states a principle, then proceeds to give an example or examples of the principle and finally reiterates the principle.

Explaining links

Good explanations make use of explaining links (Rosenshine, 1971). These are propositions and conjunction indicating causes, means, consequences, purposes of an event or idea. Examples are "because, with, in order to, if, then, therefore, consequently, by and through". The idea is to have one part of a sentence elaborating on the other part. For example, assuming students have just learnt about operant conditioning and schedules of reinforcement, the next sentence contains an appropriate explaining link (in bold) "addiction to gambling can be explained by operant conditioning on a variable schedule of reinforcement because the gambler cannot be certain that his next gamble will pay off and continues in the belief that if he stops gambling he would miss out on the big win that might have resulted from the very next gamble". Whereas "gamblers keep gambling believing that the next gamble will pay off. They are on a variable schedule of reinforcement" is an example of a poor explanation without the explaining link.

Verbal markers of importance are used to cue students to material that is especially important. For example "now listen to this" or "now let me turn to the most significant point of all".

Structural support. In print, headings are used but in lecturing the sub sections of the lecture need to be made clear from the outset. This could be done by saying, for example: "first, I’m going to talk about blah blah blah, secondly, I will talk about blah blah blah and finally I will explain the importance of blah blah blah".

Visual aids. Typical examples would be white boards, charts, handouts, projected materials, etc. The organisation could be shown all at once or the structure could be revealed progressively, as the lecture unfolds (Cheong, 1972, found the latter technique to be more effective).

Clarifying the content

Giving examples

Students rate lectures more favourably when lectures contained examples (Evans and Guyman, 1978). Examples could be positive or negative demonstrating what the principle is and what it is not. The negative examples should resemble the positive examples as closely as possible. For example: "a mammal is an animal that suckles its young. It is not necessarily a land animal nor is it four-legged".

Avoiding vagueness

Avoid words like almost, generally, and many. These words are imprecise, indefinite, ambiguous. Such words convey to the student that the teacher is unsure of the subject. Vagueness is associated with lower student achievement on tests and a poorer attitude towards the subject and lecturer.

Using rhetorical devices

Such devices give a lecture zest. Examples are:

Maintaining attention

Varying the stimuli.

Stimulus variation has motivational effects. Rosenshine (1971) found that the lecturer's changes in movement and gesturing correlated positively with students achievement. However, too much stimulus variation has been shown to lower achievement (Wyckoff, 1973).

Changing communication channels involves switching from talking to using slides, graphs, whiteboards, etc.. Adults prefer visual information but there is no evidence that the addition of visual information to oral presentations has any effect on learning. If graphs or tables are used then it is best to keep them as simple as possible (Wainer, 1992). Young students may be even more confused by graphs or tables.

Introducing pauses. A pause of between 3-30 seconds enables the lecturer to recapture attention, break monotony, give students time to think, catch up, and take notes. The pause can indicate that the lecturer is moving to a new part of his or her organisation. In giving students pauses of four minutes or so for summarising what they had just heard improved students achievement (Davis & Hull, 1997).

Using humour and showing enthusiasm

Asking questions

Asking questions in a lecture increases achievement (Berliner, 1968). Questions serve the following functions: