Questions tagged [lecture-teaching-method]

On the method of instruction known as "lecturing." Usually the lecturer will stand at the front of the room and recite information relevant to the lecture's content.

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102 votes
14 answers
16k views

The overwhelming silence in shy classes

I have been part of several classes where no-one wants to answer questions or actively take much part in the discussions. I am sure this must be frustrating for the lecturers, who try really hard to ...
Yoda's user avatar
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90 votes
13 answers
32k views

A student keeps using a native language while asking questions in the class when the course is taught in English

I am assisting a statistics course in a university, and my main job in the course is conducting problem solving sessions. The course is taught in English, and students interact with me in English. ...
Peaceful's user avatar
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89 votes
12 answers
35k views

How should I deal with very negative feedback from some students?

I am a lecturer of a computer course in a university. Two months (almost 20 hours) of lectures have already finished. Very recently, I planned to get some feedback from my students on my lectures. I ...
Coder's user avatar
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81 votes
12 answers
24k views

What to do about students who miss my lectures and then want me to repeat entire material?

I teach at a top undergraduate college of a highly ranked university in India. We have a centralized system where the syllabus is designed at the Central level (with some input from teachers) and ...
PGupta's user avatar
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66 votes
9 answers
7k views

How to improve myself as a lecturer?

I am a new lecturer in the field of Computer Science. I got my MSc and I would like to go for a PhD. However, I would like to improve my teaching methods and way of thinking before I pursue this goal. ...
Matir's user avatar
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64 votes
14 answers
15k views

What is the best practice to deal with students who sit in the back and laugh at other students' questions?

Term just started and I think every class does have some students who sit in the back (which is totally fine) but sometimes are challenging to deal with when they show some disrespect towards other ...
Anonymous's user avatar
  • 2,508
59 votes
12 answers
10k views

Mimic lecturing on blackboard, facing audience

I teach mathematics at MSc and PhD levels. My preferred method of teaching is old-fashioned: talking and writing on the blackboard at the same time. Why? Because it has many advantages: Handwriting: ...
Mark's user avatar
  • 601
52 votes
15 answers
13k views

The more I improve the quality of my course, the worse the student evaluation becomes. Should I provide low quality lectures?

For almost 6 years, I have given courses on different CS topics at my university. This year, I decided to make my lectures and tutorials for a specific master course as perfect as possible, so I and ...
Yacine's user avatar
  • 5,206
51 votes
10 answers
10k views

Is hastily writing down the professor's lecture a good way of learning?

I am writing this from the perspective of a mathematician. I am wondering whether there is any research on the standard mode of instruction. Mathematics lectures, at least in my home country, ...
Ambicion's user avatar
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47 votes
12 answers
30k views

Why wouldn't a professor allow a student to record audio of his lecture?

I am a master’s student in a public university in the state of New York. I do not consider myself to be disabled in any form but I do find it difficult to concentrate in class. I lose focus too often ...
opensam's user avatar
  • 523
46 votes
9 answers
13k views

Why do some professors not recommend any text books for a course?

I took a semester where a professor was teaching Statistics. He gave out no lecture materials nor the name of any text books. When I asked him for a text book name, he gave me a name of a 900+ pages' ...
user avatar
46 votes
11 answers
8k views

Alternatives to sewing (or any habit) to stay focused in class

I struggle with staying focused during lectures. However, while listening to online lectures, I started sewing and it has made life so much easier. I am able to listen and follow along. When the time ...
JustBlossom's user avatar
44 votes
17 answers
14k views

Should a TA point out a professor's mistake while attending their lecture?

I faced the following situation a few days back. I am doing my teaching assistance work under a professor. I attended one of his classes as a TA during which he was teaching some technically wrong ...
hanugm's user avatar
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41 votes
14 answers
16k views

Why do lecturers not just assume all students have read the book?

One thing I don't understand about lectures is why the lecturer covers the material that is already presented in the book and assigned as reading material to the students. Is the assumption that ...
Makeo's user avatar
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38 votes
7 answers
16k views

A lecturer is hard to understand, what to do?

I have a lecturer at university that I find very hard to understand. My lectures are taught in English, but my lecturer is of East Asian origin, and English is not his first language. I find the ...
Todd Davies's user avatar
36 votes
10 answers
12k views

Is it appropriate for professors to use the f*** word during lectures?

This has happened a few times. The university is an average, good university in UK. One professor said lately "I'm so sick of this f****** pandemic." Another time another lecturer said "...
Some Student's user avatar
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36 votes
9 answers
11k views

How to deal with students who refuse to do anything except take exams?

This is a follow up to my previous question. Some context: I teach at a new Fachhochschule-type institute, where my course is 5-day, 1 hour/day course to 20+ students. I am actively teaching, ...
TheVal's user avatar
  • 863
33 votes
6 answers
4k views

How to adopt flipped classroom strategies without student complaints?

I have been adopting flipped classroom strategies (in upper-level chemistry classes ~20-30 students), but I often get feedback from students that they want me to "just go back to regular lectures" and ...
Geoff Hutchison's user avatar
32 votes
8 answers
18k views

A few students requesting to cancel lectures due to their personal reasons. What should I do?

I give lectures to postgraduate students. The number of students in this batch is very low (< 20). The lectures are foundation lectures for the course. We are only into the basics of the course. ...
Coder's user avatar
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30 votes
5 answers
8k views

What is the smallest reasonable amount of time needed to prepare lectures?

What is the smallest reasonable amount of time needed to prepare lectures? I have recently learned that professors at my university (in UK) don't know who is going to teach one of the new modules ...
Some Student's user avatar
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30 votes
7 answers
10k views

Countries where lecture duration does not exceed one hour

Most (probably all) universities attribute to each subject a fixed number of credits, which in turn are [most of the time] related to the time spent in classes. In Brazil, the majority of courses ...
QuantumBrick's user avatar
  • 1,681
29 votes
6 answers
8k views

Quoting Keynes in a lecture

I am teaching mathematical statistics and part of this is large sample theory. I would like to discuss some methods that do not focus on asymptotics and refer to J. M. Keynes quote In the long run, ...
TSE's user avatar
  • 317
28 votes
1 answer
3k views

What's the meaning of "Topics in ... "?

I have seen some courses in the university that start with "Topics in this ... Topics in that ...", I have also seen some books that use that word "Topics in Algebraic Graph Theory"...
Dau's user avatar
  • 931
26 votes
14 answers
8k views

Should I give a brutally honest feedback on course evaluations?

We are towards the end of a graduate level course of about 20 students, and its time for course evaluation. The instructor is fairly new (just graduated from Ph.D a year ago) and is not a native ...
Neb Uzer's user avatar
  • 1,119
26 votes
4 answers
7k views

My students are leaving notes on exam about their difficulties and mental health. How to proceed?

This is the first semester in which classes aren't online anymore after the pandemic where I lecture (For information, this is in Brazil, and English is not my mother language). It's been two years of ...
Marra's user avatar
  • 856
24 votes
8 answers
11k views

First-time teaching PhD students make course assignment way too demanding for a new lecture

I'm attending a graduate lecture at a university in Europe. Two lecturers, both PhD students, are giving their first lecture. One of the PhD students is senior and another just recently enrolled in ...
Koothrappali's user avatar
24 votes
5 answers
3k views

Is not providing lecture notes to math students really beneficial to them?

I have attended several lectures in analysis, linear algebra and "higher mathematics for computer science students" in two universities in Germany. None of the professors giving these lectures ...
problemofficer - n.f. Monica's user avatar
23 votes
9 answers
5k views

What are the pros and cons of laptops in a classroom?

I simply could not pay attention in a lecture if I brought in a laptop. I always take notes by hand, especially since that's supposed to be better for learning. A professor of mine stated that ...
Azor Ahai -him-'s user avatar
23 votes
6 answers
3k views

What makes a didactically effective lecture? [closed]

I have made the experience that even the most excellent academics are often didactically mediocre lecturers. I also watched some of last years Nobel lectures and realised many laureates are actually ...
Constantin's user avatar
23 votes
3 answers
852 views

How important is seeing the face of the instructor?

So, I am yet to make up my mind on which is a superior mode of teaching in flipped classroom videos: Khan academy type model where you see slides or a digital drawing board and only listen to the ...
maximusyoda's user avatar
22 votes
2 answers
5k views

What to do about fellow student that hogs lecture time with many questions

I am in a master's program, and one of my peers in the program is in two classes with me. He is a nice person, but he tends to ask a lot of questions in lectures; both of which are very large, and ...
Byte Lab's user avatar
  • 1,993
21 votes
12 answers
9k views

Can I suggest that my professor use slides instead of writing everything on the board?

I got a newly hired professor this semester. He is a good teacher but sometimes gets in trouble explaining a new topic since he writes the big formulae on the board and misses a lot of things in the ...
Anmol Gupta's user avatar
21 votes
7 answers
3k views

Why have lectures in the information age?

The primary method of instruction at most colleges is lecturing, where the professor delivers and explains a set of well-established knowledge to the students. However, there are drawbacks to this: ...
Drecate's user avatar
  • 6,540
21 votes
4 answers
5k views

What are the special measures to be taken into account by a lecturer in +100-student classes?

What special measures does one take into account to deliver lectures in classes including +100 students (compared to those of less-crowded classes)?
user avatar
21 votes
3 answers
3k views

Can a person who doesn't like to talk much still become a good lecturer?

Can a person who doesn't like to talk much still become a good lecturer/academician? Do you have any experience like this or know anyone like this?
kate's user avatar
  • 769
21 votes
5 answers
2k views

Unsatisfactory Instructor Evaluations: balancing of expectations of engineering students

I teach undergraduate and graduate level courses in mechanical engineering at a research oriented university in the United States. I am a teaching track professor and my sole responsibility, on which ...
dearN's user avatar
  • 4,230
20 votes
9 answers
7k views

Should live sessions be recorded for students when teaching a math course online?

I am a course instructor. In my courses, which are now online due to the pandemic, I have optional live sessions. In those live sessions, I give examples of how to solve problems (it's a math-based ...
StatsSorceress's user avatar
20 votes
7 answers
4k views

Giving a test lecture, what should I keep in mind? [duplicate]

I hold a PhD in computer science. I've been travelling to conferences presenting my papers and sometimes as part of my teaching assistance duty, I had to give some very simple lectures to students. ...
Masiar's user avatar
  • 311
19 votes
3 answers
4k views

How to teach an undergraduate course without having taken that course formally before?

I am in the final year of my PhD. My work was on using Finite element method to study tribology. It was completely modeling based. I developed various models and have gained quite expertise in ...
Chhllt's user avatar
  • 191
19 votes
2 answers
2k views

Should remote teaching sessions be shorter than classroom sessions?

In normal years, when I teach in a physical classroom, I teach in sessions of ~90 minutes, with ~30 minutes break. This year, all teaching is done via Zoom (in real-time), and I wonder whether I ...
Erel Segal-Halevi's user avatar
18 votes
5 answers
9k views

Is it a good thing as a teacher to declare things like "Good! Things are becoming clearer already."

Is it fine for a teacher who makes a topic look easy by saying things like: "Good!" or "Easy!" or "Everything becomes perfectly clear now!" Things I can think of in ...
yanivps's user avatar
  • 347
17 votes
11 answers
9k views

Is studying at some universities relatively harder than the others?

While going through the lecture and study material on the internet, I came to realize that, in some universities in some countries (e.g. Hong Kong, New Zealand, etc) lecture materials are far more ...
user366312's user avatar
  • 5,125
17 votes
3 answers
3k views

Would preaching in a church be advantageous for becoming a lecturer?

In general, the job of a lecturer (under Australian terminology- I think the terminology is different in America) can be divided up into two main areas of focus: research and teaching, with the latter ...
nick012000's user avatar
  • 9,624
17 votes
3 answers
2k views

How to efficiently use time while preparing for a class?

I am a teaching assistant for multivariable calculus this semester. As an undergraduate, I took the course but we learned few. To add, it has been more than 5 years since I took the class. So, every ...
Ninja's user avatar
  • 353
17 votes
6 answers
2k views

How can teaching staff improve a passive student group?

I have been assigned to a section of student where I am teaching probabilistic models. From the starting day itself, I feel something strange is happening in the class. For example: I like to have ...
Coder's user avatar
  • 12.6k
16 votes
3 answers
850 views

How to balance lecture participation and not being considered a show-off?

I am a student in a rather small (20-40 students) lecture. This lecture is mandatory for the students of this subject in this semester. In the course of the lecture the professor regularly asks ...
problemofficer - n.f. Monica's user avatar
15 votes
2 answers
568 views

Appropriate way to discuss genetic conditions in a large lecture?

I want to cover the topic of achondroplasia, the most common form of dwarfism, in a large introductory biology lecture. How can I discuss it in an appropriately sensitive way, one that respects people ...
Ben Bolker's user avatar
  • 4,803
15 votes
2 answers
689 views

Alternatives to big-name proprietary remote-lecturing tools

As in many other universities, due to the coronavirus outbreak now we are supposed to do our teaching online in videoconference style. Our university suggests using either Microsoft Teams or Google ...
Federico Poloni's user avatar
14 votes
6 answers
24k views

What are the implications of the whole class failing an exam?

I am an MSc student and in my class are 10 people. The module has been taught exceptionally poorly and as a result none of us can see ourselves passing the module. The exam is in two days time. By ...
Al jabra's user avatar
  • 295
14 votes
6 answers
2k views

How to keep one's focus during discussions, meetings and lectures

I noticed that I have more and more serious problems keeping focused, and despite my efforts to fix it the problem is just getting worse over time. When I'm in a research-related discussion with ...
Imba's user avatar
  • 141