With attention span decreasing and number of distractions rising, it’s tough to be a teacher! Here are 10 tips that will help you hold more successful lectures and engage your students easier.
1. Show Your Passion
Try to show your passion and engagement. One of the most jobs for a teacher is to “infect” their students with enthusiasm and passion for their subject.
Remember to also be honest and show them what and why matters.
2. Connect With Your Audience
Try to use we instead of I, try to use examples that are relevant for your audience and keep it simple.
3. One Core Message at a Time
Do not try to convey thousand things at once. It will only make students confused, bored or overwhelmed with information. Try to concentrate at one main takeaway per slide.
4. Smile, Be Aware of Your Body Language and Make Eye Contact
It is always important to smile, make eye contact and use friendly and confident body language. This helps students connect with you and keep focused. Your audience needs to see your slides, but also you. Illustrative hand gestures are also super helpful!
5. Don’t Use Too Many Expert Terms
Yes, we know your students also need to learn exact terms used in your field, but it is also important not to over-do this, and to try and keep it simple, at least when they still are new beginners in the field.
6. Visuals Are Good – But Don’t Over-do This
Illustrative slides are very helpful and you should use them. However, too many colors, pictures and distractive design can take their attention away from the actual content of the lesson and your lecture.
7. 10-20-30 Is a Golden Rule!
Famous speaker and entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki has this rule of thumb for presentations: No more than 10 slides, no longer than 20 minutes, font size not less than 30 point.
You can combine effective presentations (lectures) with group work, discussion and other activities to have classes your students will love!
8. Don’t Be Scared to Use Technology
Even when it seems all new and complicated to you, you should use technology – it makes your work easier, and it makes your students happier.
When we say technology, we don’t only mean emails and Power Point – you should collaborate with students, use multimedia and more. CollaboraZon lets you share files, comment and create events – so that you can work with your students easier, and so that they can collaborate in smaller groups as well. It is free to use for a month, and we are sure you will love it! Register here.
9. Tell Stories
Yes, your students also need to learn some hard facts – but it is always easier to learn stories than to just swallow dates, numbers and other facts. This is how our brain works, and when you tell stories, it has at least two positive sides. #1 students will memorize the material easier. #2 they will be more focused and follow the lecture when it’s storytelling (and not just listing facts).
10. Be Creative and Experiment
Feel free to test different methods and approaches. After all, we are all unique, so some things could work better for some students and vice versa.
Don’t be afraid of trying out new things! Have fun – and share tips and advices for others in the comments.