Are you being boring? Eight tips to find out.

 Posted by on 4 December 2009  Modern Life
Dec 042009
 

Now that I am a weekly lecturer in a university class (I teach introductory journalism) I am quickly discovering the challenges of keeping people interested in what you’re saying for three full hours.

It’s different when writing, and I have a fair bit of practice setting words down (but I hope I don’t bore you here, and I’m not offended if you scroll down to other posts). Speaking out loud though, either extemporaneously or with notes, is a wildly different beast.

Gretchen Rubin, who blogs at Psychology Today, has a list of eight personal observations she’s made that you can use to tell if you’re boring someone. It sounds a lot like the last hour of my classes:

1. Repeated, perfunctory responses.
2. Simple questions.
3. Interruption.
4. Request for clarification.
5. Imbalance of talking time.
6. Abrupt changes in topic.
7. Body position.
8. Audience posture.

She goes into a fair bit of detail with each one. A couple of years ago, she also made a list of topics to avoid if you want to not bore someone.

I’m indebted to Boing Boing for the links. I don’t know for sure if I can make my classes a heck of a lot more lively (I already do a lot of in-class debate and I encourage dialog, which works; it’s the straight lecture portions where I don’t always shine), but I can at least know for sure just how bored those students are.

Sorry guys.

Grant Hamilton

  • MPot

    The best way to lecture well is not to lecture at all, honestly. It’s poor pedagogy — very little is learned from a lecture, in the sense that what is learned is superficial, unlikely to be remembered longer than a couple of days (a week if you’re really good), and abstract (that is, even the brightest students will be unable to apply what they are learing, ad there will be little trasnfer outside of the course). This is especially important if you want them to be able to DO things with what you’re teaching. In a course like yours, active learning cycles with a variety of relevent tasks to complete are probably best.

    Sorry. I realize I’m annoying! This is what I do for a living. Not your fault — many universities still don’t offer any pedagogical training or education, so everyone assumes lecturing as the default, even sole, teaching method. In your case, you have some debates and dialogue, which means you’re doing better than most. :)