Delivering Engaging Lectures: Personal Reflections from My Experiences as a University Guest Lecturer
I share my thoughts on how to deliver an engaging lecture, drawing from my experiences in delivering guest lectures at university (and, to a smaller extent, my past experiences in delivering junior college lectures).
Some of these reflections are immediately applicable while others depend on the situation or take more time. Regardless, I hope these reflections will be as useful to you as they have been to me.
First, you have to do your homework.
The secret to success is in the pre-lecture preparation.
I spend time preparing for my lectures, developing or refining decks of slides with clear content, visuals, diagrams, and, sometimes, even videos.
Think about the level and background of your audience.
Tweak your content to be accessible and relevant to them.
Even if I am familiar with the material, I still think about what I want to say and rehearse up to seven times.
I will recite my lines, paying attention to where words roll off the tongue smoothly.
I will sharpen or simplify sentences. I’ve found that, unsurprisingly, shorter, sharper sentences work best.
If inspiration strikes, a catchy soundbite or elegant turn of phrase will emerge, and I write it down and recite it a few times.
If I need to re-familiarise myself with the content, I will read up. (Yes, I even read books that I have written before.)
Even if I have used my deck of slides many times before, I will still review the slides. Sometimes, I spot glaring typos in my slides.
At other times, I see phrases that make me cringe.
And at other times, I see facts, arguments, or reflections that have evolved since my last lecture. I will take the opportunity to make sure my materials are as up-to-date as I possibly can.
Reviewing, reciting, and rehearsing your lecture materials will help ensure that you are able to give your best to the audience.
Second, on the actual day, warm the crowd up before you begin.
In the case of a guest lecture, you do not personally know many of the people in the crowd.
In contrast, when you are giving lectures at junior college or you are the regular lecturer for a course, you typically already know your tutorial classes or form classes.
This can make a huge difference.
It’s because you are speaking essentially to people you know personally if you have spent prolonged periods of time with the same students.
And what tends to happen after a semester, or a year, or two, is that even for the rest of the students who are not in your tutorial classes or form classes, they would recognise you and you would gradually recognise them.
It is easier to build rapport with people you recognise than people you don’t.
So, when giving guest lectures, you might have to speed up this process and start speaking with a few people in the room before the talk starts.
At the very least, speak with the professor who invited you and his or her teaching assistant. Understand them and what they are interested in.
Speaking with people before the talk starts will help them get to know you as a person; you can better understand some of the things they came here to learn about; and you can have a few friendly faces to look at during your lecture.
Maintain eye contact with your audience to show them that you are engaging with them.
Third, have multiple hooks.
People are interested in different things.
This is perfectly natural.
When delivering a lecture, you have to hold the attention of your audience and if you are only appealing to one segment or group, you might bore others.
So, the idea of multiple hooks is essentially to speak about things that relate to different people and in a way that would interest them.
A hook is essentially how you grab hold of your audience’s attention and make it engaging and relevant to them.
Taking history as a starting point, some history lecturers you might have come across can inspire sleepiness.
Yet others, teaching the exact same material, can inspire miraculous feats of scholarship, often beginning with an intriguing question, a surprising fact or figure, or a compelling anecdote.
Many years ago, I attended a lecture given by a talented teacher. Let’s call him Mr H.
I was struck by how Mr H always seemed to be linking the past and present together, drawing links between historical events and life today. He would ask thought-provoking questions for more cerebral students to mull over and then immediately jump to talking about more day-to-day things like movies, newspapers, and computer games. He would show dramatic pictures on one slide and raise detailed discussion points on the next.
He was essentially drawing on the principle that you have to vary your approaches to maintain people’s interest. He related knowledge to different things that different people were keen on.
This is related to my next point.
Fourth, involve your audience.
Most lectures tend to be a one-way street. The sage on the stage delivers the wisdom; everyone else listens respectfully.
But what if lectures were interactive?
After all, some learners learn by participating actively.
I use many questions when delivering my lectures. Other than increasing engagement and participation, it actually helps learning because students are now thinking of the answers.
You can also quiz the audience, by using live polls or quick quizzes to gauge their understanding.
You can also ask people to raise their hands: “With a show of hands, how many of you…” Their raised hands will give you a sense of how many think, believe, or feel a certain way. If you want them to discuss some questions, you can even use “think-pair-share” to deepen engagement.
I used to love this one very much.
Basically, the core concept is to give them a question, problem, or debate topic to think about individually; then they can exchange ideas with their neighbour sitting next to them; and then they can volunteer to share with the entire class.
Fifth, speak conversationally.
There is such a thing as a “lecturer tone”.
You might have heard it before. You know what I am talking about.
There are many different tones from many different personas, like “a pastor tone”, “a Roman Catholic priest tone”, and definitely a “lecturer or teacher-y tone”.
One of my biggest secrets in delivering engaging lectures is that I simply don’t use a lecturer’s tone.
Instead, I just speak like my normal self: conversationally.
I also use clear and simple words, phrases, and sentences — those I would actually say on a day-to-day basis.
Part of the fear some people have is that if they use simple words, people would think they are simple.
But the surprising fact is that even very high-level people use simple words for communication.
Now, speaking conversationally doesn’t mean that you let all your bad habits out, like dropping “F” bombs all over the place or being plain mean, nasty, or rude.
In particular, I believe you do have to mind your Ps and Qs and remember to be sensitive and sensible.
Speaking conversationally is more like speaking nicely to your grandma, a fairly intelligent layperson whom you like.
For example, you wouldn’t say, “Ah Ma, to analyse the cake popularity situation (or lack thereof), we have conducted a multi-variate regression analysis, assuming the heteroskedasticity of the error terms, to find out the correlation between various factors…”
No, you would simply say, “There are many reasons why people might not like your cake, Ah Ma.”
(And if you are Asian like I am, you will probably hasten to add politely and respectfully, “But I love your cake, Ah Ma.”)
Apply that same principle to lecturing.
If you understand something deeply, there has to be a way to put it across more simply, accessibly, and conversationally, without big, fancy, and confusing words.
And your listeners will thank you for doing so.
Sixth, notwithstanding, you must still be a “sage on the stage”.
Direct instruction remains important in delivering lectures.
At the end of the day, a strong delivery is still needed: basically, being able to stand confidently in front of a large room, command the audience, and directly deliver a strong message.
A strong delivery is active. The speaker must look at the audience and, while delivering the message, sense changes in mood and feeling.
When I was a teacher many years ago, this concept was known to me as “withitness”.
Withitness is the capacity to perceive the learning needs of students, notice their subtle behaviour, understand their nonverbal and verbal cues, and respond quickly to unexpected situations.
You know how some teachers have eyes at the back of their heads?
That’s withitness.
When the audience is starting to lose interest, the speaker must pick up the pace, or change volume, or even pause dramatically.
When the audience starts to lean forward and attention has been granted, the speaker must not lose the interest, but build on it and continue delivering point after point right home.
The speaker must deliver the firepower to the demands of the moment, adjusting slightly, refining the actual approach along the way.
Because I believe in a growth mindset, I believe delivery can be strengthened through training and practice over time.
You can also learn about lecture delivery from observation.
If you observe good speakers, what do you see or hear? How did they deliver the message such that you were mesmerised?
Over time, you can grow into a sage on the stage.
In summary
Prepare your slides, script, and content, and rehearse well, in advance of your lecture.
Warm up the crowd early on the day itself, build rapport, and be approachable.
Prepare multiple points of interest to hook the audience, grabbing their attention and making them think.
Think through several good, open questions that you would ask. Ask the audience to participate at relevant junctures.
Practise speaking conversationally in clear, concrete, and simple terms that people can understand.
Confidently and actively deliver your lecture, commanding the room, and paying attention to what is happening and adjusting slightly along the way.
Of all these reflections, if I had to choose the most important point, I would return to what I shared right at the start: I think preparation and practice are the most important.
If you prepare, rehearse, and review how you deliver your lecture, to the best of your ability, the audience will likely see, hear, and feel the strength of your message.
And over time, with more practice and experience, you will find that like me you enjoy giving engaging lectures as much as other people enjoy listening to what you have to share.
Thank you for reading.
Cheers,
Shawn Seah
(The original story was first posted on my Medium blog. It was, rather surprisingly, one of the most viewed, most read, and highest earning articles. This story was updated on 1 September 2024.)
