Back To Undergraduate Lectures

A lecture is a teaching process. It does not conform to the literal meaning of “teaching” but consolidate other learning processes with it. A lecturer will deliver his lecture and students are expected to sit, listen and take notes. It takes a matured person to do that and absorb the contents to understand . At the same time lecturer will play his/her roles during the delivery period. I have been given one undergraduate class this semester and I went in happy because the subject seemed to be “an easy programming course” but came out rather speechless. The thing is that lecturing an undergraduate course requires special motivation,skills and patient---none of which was present during my first class. I thought I was away not too long but it was long enough for the skills and patient to evaporate. I was shocked to the fact that I have to adjust myself a lot to get leveled with them and get my points across. I was shocked for not having enough resources for the learning to be more effective ; in addition to the fact that they were badly depending on them. I was utterly surprised to find out the digital knowledge that these students have as we are living in the 21st century. Anyway, I am overly concerned with my lecture rather than their incompetency. I have to relearn and revisit my old and dusty programming files to recover my teaching methods.

I remember that when one is set to go for a lecture and deliver a subject there are two things of great importance : organization and attitudes. A lecture should be organized in such a way that comprehension and retention can be the outcome at the end of the day. The objectives must be determined and spelt out clearly. What is it that you want the students to take away with after the lecture has finished. The objectives may be to help students learn how to solve problems, comprehend a major framework or demonstrate the ability to analyse and criticize . The mistake always happen when we make that the lecture to tell about something…it is obvious isn’t it ? But rather think that the lecture should be about what I want my students to learn. It’s like between giving facts about a story and telling them a short story. A story is not complete without an intro, a body and a conclusion. A good lecture is similar to that; start with an introduction that tells them what would be the order of the day, then give them the story and at the end of it conclude wisely to wrap up the lecture.

I guess teaching is not as easy as it seems; but on the other hand it is not too difficult to handle also. Life is always like that, don’t you think so? As long as we put our mind into it nothing seems difficult. It could be a lot of fun. Most people say teaching is for the ladies and only sissy men would stick around to endure the job. Well whatever it is I love this job and it seems to fit me very well. Sissy or not you can come and see me; maybe I can rearrange the way you spell the word "sissy" properly.