How to Deliver an Outstanding Public Lecture

The public presentation of your ideas is an integral part of academia.

It also is a part of academic where we receive minimal training. For many of us, our training in public speaking consists in the opportunity to present research in graduate seminars, and, if we are lucky, the chance to have our “job talk” critiqued by esteemed members of our department.

In a previous post, I provided guidelines on how to deliver an effective presentation. In this post, I will focus on how to deliver an outstanding public lecture.



Why, you might ask, would an academic want to learn to give a memorable public lecture? I can only speak for myself. From my perspective, I work hard at coming up with ideas that I hope will change the way people think about social issues. If these ideas are only shared with other academics, then my work will have limited value. In contrast, if I can learn to translate my ideas into more widely-read pieces, then, perhaps I will have a chance to actually change the way we talk about social issues I think are important. That is the reason I decided to learn how to write OpEds. (By the way, I have had some success this year publishing OpEds!!)

My desire to be relevant is also the reason I decided to work on becoming a better public speaker.

For me, becoming an outstanding public speaker is still a work in progress. I continue to hone my skills and to look for examples of ways to become exceptional. Along the way, I have learned a few things that I will share with you.

Becoming an Outstanding Public Speaker: Style and Content

First of all, I have learned that there are two separate areas you have to work on: 1) Learning to be an engaging speaker; and 2) Having something memorable to say.

I will deal with each of these separately.

Style

Your presentation style is important. An excellent public lecture will have many of the following qualities.

• Evocative images. One of the best presentations I ever saw was about social isolation in Chicago. I saw this presentation over ten years ago and can still remember the photos of children playing in empty lots.
• Don’t read your paper. Or if you do read your paper, make sure no one can tell you are reading. It can be very difficult for audience members to listen to you read a paper.
• Add in some humor. This can be difficult when you are talking about depressing topics, but a joke or two can do a lot to keep your audience listening.
• Tell a story. This can be a story about yourself, about the data, or from anywhere else. The point is that stories are engaging and you should tell one or more. You can organize your whole talk as a story. You can begin with a story. You can use stories to demonstrate points.
• Practice your presentation until you are completely comfortable with it.
• When you go to public lectures yourself, take note of what works and what doesn’t work. And, emulate those talks you find most provocative.

Content

Presentation style is important, but you will not impress an audience if you do not also have substance. This is a bit trickier to describe, but you should aim to make your presentation memorable. Here are a few ideas.

• Your presentation must include information that no one in the audience already knows. If you are presenting based on a book you have already written and some people may have read, then include something extra that did not make it into the book. Or include a backstory. No one should leave the room and think they learned nothing.
• Your presentation should make people think. The audience wants to be engaged. They want to know more. You have made them think about things in new ways. This is awesome.
• Your presentation should have a clear argument. When people leave, they should be able to say: “I went to this outstanding public lecture, where the speaker argued ….”

Those are my thoughts on what makes an outstanding public lecture. I have given dozens of public lectures, yet I continue to hone my skills.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and seeing the resources you are aware of for giving great talks. Please let us know in the comments section.

PS: I recently came across this post on Lifehacker that has some great tips on giving a public lecture.

How To Avoid Spending All of Your Time Teaching: Seven Tips for Efficient Teaching

Do you spend all of your time teaching?

For all professors, teaching is an important part of our job. However, for most professors, it is not the only important part of what we do. Most of us have other obligations and we risk putting those in jeopardy when we spend all of our time preparing for class and grading.

Me - teaching - in my first year on the tenure-track!

In a recent post, I explained that I spend about six hours a week preparing for each class I teach. As a caveat, I will say that number is a guesstimate, and the number of hours varies depending on the class.

When I teach a graduate-level seminar, I usually have to spend about four hours reading the book I assigned, another two hours taking notes on it, and another hour writing out discussion questions and reading students’ responses. In graduate seminars, I usually spend about five to ten minutes at the beginning of the class laying out the importance of the book to the field and then we spend the rest of the class engaging in discussion. Typically, I ask one student to lead class discussion each week.

When I teach an undergraduate class, the weekly readings usually only take me two hours or less, and I spend more time on grading and preparing PowerPoint slides. For undergraduate classes, I usually spend about 15 minutes of an hour-long class lecturing, and use the rest of the time for discussion and in-class activities.

I have been teaching university for about a decade, and usually teach classes on race, immigration, and sociological writing.

Here are a seven tips to avoid spending all of your time teaching.

Tip #1: Try to minimize new course preps.
Your ability to do this will vary by institution, but many administrators will find your suggestion that you teach no more than one new prep a year reasonable. Personally, I find one new course prep a year just enough to keep things interesting.

Tip #2: Teach classes as closely related to your research as possible.
If your research is on race, offer to teach a graduate seminar on race. When choosing the books, choose those texts you are grappling with in your own work. A graduate seminar should have the classics, of course, but students also need to be familiar with cutting-edge work in your field, and they will benefit immensely with hearing you talk about how you are engaging new ideas in your own work.

For undergraduate teaching, you also often can select readings that are closely related to your own work, and sometimes even pilot your own books or articles in class.

Tip #3: Keep lectures to a minimum.
I hope that all of your classes are not 300-student lectures – where lecturing may be the only option. However, if you have 60 students or less in the room, you should be able to engage students in discussion. For a 50-minute class, I usually lecture for about ten to fifteen minutes. I use this time to make it clear to students what topics they need to be paying attention to and what I hope to accomplish during the class period. Then, I move into discussion and group activities.

Tip #4: Find the schedule that works best for you and ask for it.
Some departments and universities are more flexible about scheduling than others. Knowing what teaching times are best for you is the first step towards getting an ideal teaching time. When works best for you?

In my first job, I was given a teaching schedule of 8am to 10am on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I taught at those times for the first year, and then asked to change. Over time, I have realized that the ideal teaching time for me is in the afternoon and that I prefer to teach my classes in three-hour blocks. Thus, I ask for this schedule, and, thus far, have been able to make a case for it.

Tip #5: Set aside specific times for class preparation and stick to them.
This semester, I am fortunate to have only one class that I teach on Wednesday afternoons. I read for class on Monday and Tuesday evenings. I prepare my PowerPoint slides from 10am to noon on Wednesdays, and finalize my notes and grade short papers between 2pm and 3pm when class starts. I use Thursday office hours to respond to student inquiries and to deal with other things related to teaching. Since I know I have time set aside for each of these activities, I rarely think about class outside of those times.

Tip #6: Engage the students in discussion from the first day of class.
As I said above, I rarely lecture, and when I do, my lectures are short. Once I have finished conveying information to students, I ask them a series of questions. My class preparation thus involves preparing a short lecture, and then preparing a list of questions to ask students. I go through the questions, asking them one by one. Sometimes it becomes clear that I need to clarify certain points, so I may move back into a brief lecture. Other times students may take class in a direction I had not anticipated, so I try and bring them around. Either way, a discussion-based class is more engaging and requires less preparation than preparing and practicing an hour-long lecture.

Tip #7: Use rubrics for grading.
Grading is another area that can be very field-specific. However, most fields allow for the use of rubrics to grade papers. I assign two five-page papers in each of my 45-student undergraduate classes, and use rubrics to grade them. The rubrics are straightforward and allow me to communicate effectively with students what points they are getting and what points they are missing. That way, I do not have to write extensive comments on their papers.

In fact, unless you are a language teacher, you should not line-edit your students’ work. And, even if you are a language teacher, this guide explains that you should only line-edit the first 20 percent and then let students do the rest of the editing themselves.

There you have it – my seven tips for being a more efficient teacher.

Although readers have often asked for this post, I have waited a long time to write it, in part because it seems a bit taboo to suggest that we try and minimize the amount of time we spend teaching. We are professors after all! On the other hand, I should say that I consistently get very high teaching evaluations and students regularly communicate to me that they learn a lot in my classes. On my most recent set of student evaluations, my teaching scores were an average of 6.7 out of 7. Student evaluations are only one measure of teaching success – but I thought I would share that with you as further evidence that you do not have to spend 40 hours each week preparing for one class for that class to be successful.

I recognize that these tips may be best suited to someone in a situation similar to mine – teaching in the social sciences at a large public institution. However, I imagine that any professor would find at least some of these suggestions helpful.

Let me know what works for you in your quest to be an effective and efficient teacher.

How to Overcome Writer’s Block: Seven Strategies that Work

It happens to the best of us. We wake up. We go to the computer. We intend to write. Two hours later, we have put 0 words on the page. What happened?



You know what happened, so I won’t go into detail. Instead, let’s focus on a few ways to get words on the page (or the screen) even when it seems we’d rather do almost anything else. For many writers, the trick is to get started, because once we get started, there’s no stopping us!

If you are having trouble getting started with your writing, try one (or more) of these seven strategies to overcome your writer's block.

Strategy #1) Meditate for five minutes

As soon as you realize it is your writing time and you are not writing, stop whatever you are doing, set a timer for five minutes and meditate. I am not an expert on meditation, but I can say that you don’t have to be to do a five-minute meditation. Simply set a timer for five minutes, close your eyes, and focus on your breathing for five minutes. Pay attention to the thoughts that come to your mind, and bid them farewell as you focus on your breathing. I find it easy to bid thoughts farewell as I breathe out, as it feels cleansing.

Strategy #2) Cut off the Internet.

Unplug. Open up your Word Processing program. Don’t allow yourself to turn it back on until you have 500 new words on the page. The Internet can be an amazing tool. However, no matter what writing project you are working on, once you have your document in front of you, I am sure there is something you can do to move the document forward without the Internet.

Strategy #3) Call a friend.

Tell her you are having trouble writing, but promise to spend the next 60 minutes writing. Ask her to call you back in 60 minutes to tell her how many words you have written. It is amazing what accountability can do.

Strategy #4) Do some exercise.

Do 100 jumping jacks or 20 pushups. Walk around the block. My personal favorite is to power up my Xbox and put on a zumba song. I rock out to one song, which takes just five minutes (and burns about 100 calories) and then get back to writing.

Strategy #5) Go old school.

Turn off the computer. Pull out a pad of paper and a pen and get to writing. Draw figures to conceptualize your project. Write about why you don’t feel like writing. Write and think through a theoretical puzzle. Write up your methods section. Whatever you do, spend at least 20 minutes with a pen and paper and watch how your writing is reinvigorated.

Strategy #6) Have a healthy snack.

Go to the kitchen. Grab an apple. Do something fancy to it, like peel it and cut it into pieces. Or, taken a mango and cut it restaurant-style. Do something methodical and creative with a healthy snack and then eat it. You will be amazed at how that little bit of left-brain activity and a sweet reward can fuel your writing.

Strategy #7) Change your location.

If you are working on a laptop or with a pen and paper, move yourself to another room. If you work at a university, try going to the library or a study room. If you are at home, try out the dining room table or the living room. If you live in a studio, try facing a different window. Move yourself to a new location and tell yourself that this is your writing spot for the day.

I hope one of these seven strategies works for you. I wouldn’t be surprised if you found it useful to work one or two of these strategies into your everyday writing routine.

Just imagine yourself getting up, preparing a quick, but artful breakfast, then meditating for five minutes, sitting down and writing for 30 minutes before getting up and doing 25 pushups and writing for another 30 minutes. What a rocking morning that would be!



Best of luck with your writing, and let me know which of these (or other) strategies help you move through writer’s block.

How Are You Spending Your Time?

Time is our most valuable resource, and we must be careful with how we spend it. This is particularly true when you are on the tenure track and have a set amount of time to reach specific goals.

How are you spending your time? Are you making the best use of your time to reach your goals?

I recently met two Assistant Professors who told me that they had not written anything this year. Both of these Assistant Professors work at research-intensive institutions. One told me she spent all her time preparing for two new courses. The other told me he was spending all of his time working on several major committees.

Both of these professors seem to have their priorities out of balance. As faculty, our job includes research, teaching, and service. At a research institution, you will be evaluated primarily on the basis of your research, although you also have to engage in teaching and service to meet your job requirements. I think that the best way to ensure balance is to engage in all three of these activities each week.

Let’s presume for now that you are working a 40-hour week – although I know many of you insist you are not. How should you be spending your work week?

When I worked at the University of Kansas, my department made it clear that I would be evaluated based on my research, teaching, and service. My chair also told me specifically that I would be evaluated with the following formula: 40% teaching, 40% research, and 20% service. At the end of each year, we had to fill out merit forms that used this same formula.

It became clear to me that I needed to align my time with my priorities. Thus, I made a little chart for myself and decided that I would spend my time according to those priorities. I would spend at least 16 hours a week on research, 16 on teaching, and no more than 8 on service.

Let’s look at 16 hours on teaching. With two courses, I was spending 6 hours in the classroom, and had 2 hours of office hours a week. That left me with 8 hours to prepare class and grade. Thus, I scheduled that amount of time into my week to accomplish those tasks.

Next up was 16 hours of research. For me, that translated into 2 hours a day of writing and one hour a day of reading, searching for literature, and other tasks related to research.

I had 8 hours a week left over for service. As an Assistant Professor, I rarely spent 8 hours a week on service. I often had about 3-4 hours a week in meetings. Some weeks I had to spend extra hours outside of meetings reading files. But, usually, I used that time to respond to emails.

My schedule looked something like this:

To keep to this schedule, I do my best to avoid scheduling meetings in the morning – time I have set aside for research and writing. These activities are an important part of my job and I do them best in the morning. Thus, I don’t schedule any other activities during this time.

When students ask to meet with me, I encourage them to come to my office hours. If they can’t make that time, I schedule a time with them that fits into my teaching time.

When I get Doodle polls about meeting, I try and schedule those in the afternoon – when I have set aside time for service and email.

Of course, I often have to rearrange my schedule. However, when that happens, I just move things around. Let’s say someone wants to schedule a meeting during my teaching prep time. I simply switch those two times around. The most important thing is that I am spending the appropriate amount of time on each aspect of my job.

What about you? How much time do you spend on research, teaching, and service each week? Is the amount of time you spend in line with the priorities of your institution?