Hi everyone, so welcome to another academic video. At my university, so I'm in the UK, it's almost time to start class again. So in just a few weeks, I'll be back in the lecture theatre delivering lectures to the first years on physics.
So in this video, I thought I would share five ways to start your lecture. that will hopefully keep your students interested in what you're saying. I'm a big believer in trying to make my classes and my lectures fun, engaging, you know, I want the students to enjoy what I'm trying to teach them.
I've sat through some amazing lectures when I was a student and I've sat through some pretty awful lectures. and I'm sure I've given both. I'm sure I've given really great classes and I'm sure I've given classes where I was like, yeah that wasn't quite such a good class. But one thing I like to try to do is to change the way that I start a lecture.
You know, I don't want students to come in, sit at their seats and every time I start a lecture I start it in the same way. I like to use different ways and different techniques just to see if I can capture people's attention at the start of class. Please let me know in the comments how do you start your lectures? You know at the moment I'm busy planning for my classes so if you have any awesome ideas about ways that are neat to start a lecture class please let me know. I'll happily try them out in this semester and just to mix things up.
But yeah here we go five ways to start your lecture class. Tell the class! when the next break is going to be.
So one of the ways that I open a lecture is I show a map of what I'm planning to teach and importantly in that map I show when there's fun activities, when there's going to be breakout sessions and when there are going to be class break times. I used to have a two-hour lecture class on physics and 120 minutes is a long time for any of us to concentrate. on physics principles and ideas and theories.
So I used to try to break my lectures up and I'd have a mixture of, you know, activities, things for the class to do, some time where I was talking about what I was working on, and importantly breaks. And I think there's something quite nice about sharing when those breaks are going to be straight at the start of the lecture class so that the students know how long they're going to need to concentrate for. and you know I'm much more I guess likely myself to be engaged if somebody says focus hard for 15 20 minutes and then you're going to get a break I'm like yep I'm on board with this I can do it so my first way that I open a lecture is I show literally a map so kind of like a block diagram map of what I'm going to be teaching in that particular class and when are the coffee breaks the pause breaks that get your mobile phone out look at TikTok look at Instagram when are the break points in my class One of the ways that I really like to start class is actually not with me talking. I'm a big fan of opening with a video clip.
I use YouTube clips quite a lot. You can chat about that in a future video about how to include clips within your your lecture and be within copyright. But yeah I use videos quite a bit.
I use clips to music. Just something different to catch people's attention and that video clip might be humorous it could be illustrating a physics principle, you know, it could be highlighting a demonstration that I can't actually perform in the lecture theatre but I want the students to be able to see just something short, snappy, fun and catchy, but that isn't me talking. So yeah, I often will open my lectures with short video clips to start the class.
As we move through the semester and the students are becoming more familiar with the material and the way that I kind of teach class, sometimes I'll open with a question. So rather than me starting off by showing them a derivation or talking through some physics principles, I will show a question maybe that came from an exam paper or a tutorial question and I'll give the whole class 10 minutes to have a go at working out the answer. And then the next part of my lecture will be going through that answer and then we'll talk about the principles behind that.
question. It's just a way to get the class actively engaged straight away. You know, they don't get to sit down and relax and just listen to me start talking.
They have to immediately start to do something and think about a problem and engage with the subject. So yeah, quite often, especially in the latter part of the semester, I will pose a question. as a way of starting my lecture class. I think it can be quite nice to, if it's within your subject and it's possible, to bring out kind of like the personal story.
So sometimes rather than opening on the physics, I'll open on the person behind the physics. So you know I've got some some interesting characters in my physics lectures, you know, some people in the historical past who did interesting experiments and all sorts of crazy ideas and things. And I'll do a little bit of background research. I'll try to get some kind of older photographs or some kind of history about the person. And I'll share something funny or interesting or dangerous or creative about the person behind the science.
And I do that as a lecture opener to try to start my lecture off. almost as a story. You know, if I can get a narrative that there was actually a person or some team of people or there was some conflict or there was some intrigue, if I can capture people's attention with the narrative behind the physics, I can then sometimes bring the class with me then into the actual technicalities of the rest of the lecture. So yeah, often I will open almost in storytelling mode, but it's a very much picking out characters behind what I'm trying to teach and bringing out that kind of the personal side of the subject. And one of the other things I will sometimes do to open a class is I'll start with a class vote.
So this will very much depend on what software you have to hand and how your university operates. Where I teach we have a couple of different ways that we can get the class to vote. typically using their mobile phones or using their laptops.
And so I might pose a question and then ask the class to vote on it. Now it could be something, an area of the science, I could ask them something about the topic to kind of gauge their understanding right at the beginning of the lecture. I could ask them a question about how you want the class to proceed, you know almost like one of those kind of story books where you get a choice between two different chapters, you know do the class want to see this or do we want to go down this other route instead? Or I could ask them kind of a multiple choice kind of voting question about something that's happened in the past, like did they understand a particular topic or was there you know maybe something going on in the university calendar and I want to ask them a question about it.
Again the use of voting at the start of the lecture is a really good way of getting active class participation, you know again they're not able just to sit there and just listen to me. the class is asked to do something and I'm hoping the students are going to engage with that activity and again it's just a different way of starting the lecture. So yeah they are my ways of opening my lectures. I'm sure I do different ways as well, I'm sure in some lectures I do just typically start talking. I think quite often I use the map route of telling people where we're going and you know what's coming up in the class. I am a big fan of a video clip if you've ever sat through any of my lectures you know you will see that I put clips in, music in, bits and pieces like that.
I do like a good story as well. I always find it really personally fascinating finding out about these people and the way they kind of influence the science that I now enjoy and study and learn and want to develop. So yeah I really do like the kind of the norm, the storytelling narrative route of starting a lecture class. That is something that yeah I think could be good fun.
But Let me know, how do you start your lecture? Do you have a tried and tested technique? Do you vary it depending on your lecture class?
I will do things differently for a two hour class versus a one hour class. I will do things differently as well, depending whether it's in person or I'm doing it as a kind of a virtual session. I will pop a couple of links below.
They're on preparing lectures. So ones if you're preparing a class and that lecture material already exists and you've taken over the lecture class. and one is if you're having to prepare a brand new lecture for the first time.
I think I recorded those videos last year so if the sound quality or the video quality isn't quite as good hopefully things are getting, you know, improving on this channel but maybe have a look at those, they might hopefully help you if you're thinking about writing a lecture. Over the next few weeks I'll share a few things that have worked for me and not worked for me. I'm going to share a few things that went wrong in lectures because I think that can be quite useful.
And I'll also talk a little bit about how to cope with nerves. You know, it can be quite a big thing standing up in front of a room of 100, 200 people, even 10, 20, 30 people, and you're being the one delivering class for that very first time to that particular subject group. And you know, I remember that first lecture that I gave and walking into the lecture theatre. So I'll, you know, share.
a few things that I did to try to help lectures go smoothly and to help me feel confident. But yeah, leave me a comment. How do you start your lecture class?
Or if you're a student, what is your preferred way for a lecturer to start their class? Have an awesome week. As always, you know, leave me a comment, like, subscribe, click the notification bell. Keep staying safe, enjoy these last few weeks before semester starts again, and I will see you next Monday. Bye!