Yesterday I was too cerebral. Today I'm too literal minded. I'm fairly good at laying out facts and figures in a logical sequence. I realized long ago that I'd never be one of those professors who engages students with humorous anecdotes and memorable stories. I'm not funny, and I don't have any stories. I manage to be reasonably well liked1 by my students, but no one's going to confuse me with Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert. Any success I've had as a teacher comes from being organized, not from any showmanship.2
In chapter 2, Randy Olson gives us another insight into effective communication, courtesy of Tom Hollihan, a communications professor at USC:
But to capture a broad audience (or to keep a reporter from falling a sleep), I need to learn how to arouse their interest, and to do that I'll have to speak to one of the three organs I'm least comfortable with, and the lower down in the body I can find a way to go, the more likely I am to be successful.
Damn! There are reasons not many people read this blog, Too cerebral, too literal minded. But I can't help myself. I am a nerd.
In chapter 2, Randy Olson gives us another insight into effective communication, courtesy of Tom Hollihan, a communications professor at USC:
When it comes to mass communication, it's as simple as two things: arouse and fulfill. You need first to arouse your audience and get them interested in what you have to say; then you need to fulfill their expectations.Students are a captive audience. They are in the room because they have to be there.3 So as a professor I have the most difficult part taken care of for me. My audience already cares (at least a little).
But to capture a broad audience (or to keep a reporter from falling a sleep), I need to learn how to arouse their interest, and to do that I'll have to speak to one of the three organs I'm least comfortable with, and the lower down in the body I can find a way to go, the more likely I am to be successful.
Damn! There are reasons not many people read this blog, Too cerebral, too literal minded. But I can't help myself. I am a nerd.
1Maybe more respected than liked.
2I still use overhead transparencies and a white board rather than PowerPoint, although I do occasionally throw in a web page or YouTube video.
3Well, they don't have to be there, of course. Many of them aren't, but they do have to learn (some of) the material if they want to pass the course, and the ones who are there want to do well.
overheads and whiteboards often convey much more efficiently than powerpoint. at least, for the learners, they probably learn more from those media than just grabbing powerpoint slides and memorizing.
isn't being cerebral and literal an essential trait for most who pursue life fully enmeshed in the sciences?
btw, a younger faculty member here is going to be giving grad students a 2 hour workshop on The Art of Presentation ("The Art of making good slides and presenting them well). So i passed along the Newsweek link. I think he found it .... amusing.
Granted, overheads and whiteboards are better tools for communicating information, but if you're trying to capture the attention of an audience, they're not very useful.