Tomorrow’s Professor Msg. #85 MINIMIZING MENTAL LAPSES DURING A LECTURE

Folks:  

The following excerpt provides some valuable insights on how to minimize student mental lapses during a lecture.  It is from an excellent book, Mentor in a Manual, Climbing the Academic Ladder to Tenure, Madison, WI, Magna Publications, Inc., 1994 , pp.173-174, by A. Clay Schoenfeld and Robert Magnan.

Regards,

Rick Reis

UP NEXT: Suggestions for Teaching With Excellence

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MINIMIZING MENTAL LAPSES DURING A LECTURE

Most instructors are aware that students don’t always follow every single word; in fact, they may get lost for considerable lengths of time.  Students may experience four kinds of mental lapses during a lecture, according to Mary Budd Rowe, a chemistry professor [1]:

SHORT-TERM MEMORY OVERLOADS.  If new ideas come too fast, short-term memory- the mental buffer zone for temporary information storage — may overflow. Researchers estimate it takes between five and 10 seconds to transfer  information from short-term to long-term memory.

MOMENTARY MISUNDERSTANDINGS.  If a student doesn’t immediately grasp an idea, confusion results.  The student must make sense of the new idea, ift it into what he or she already knows and understands, or it can’t move into long-term memory.

TRANSLATION TROUBLES.  When instructors use terms other than those used in the text or previous lectures, students may have difficulty making the necessary translation.  They may struggle to integrate familiar and unfamiliar terms, to determi ne what they mean.

SIDETRACKS.  Something is said that leads the student into another train of thought, distracting him or her from the lecture.

Rowe recommends a two-minute pause every eight to 12 minutes, to let students review their notes with each other, fill in missing material, clarify unclear concepts, and briefly discuss what they’re learning.  Short breaks not only lessen the damage of mental lapses, she says, but they also seem to help prevent them.

Three other strategies are helpful in minimizing mental lapses.  Keep your terminology as consistent as possible.  If you need to introduce new terms, put them on the board, an overhead, or a handout, and define them.  When presenting a new idea, moving to another phase, or changing direction, try to make contextual connections: "Now, in the case of XYZ — which, as you recall, is a variant form of ABC sued for…"

Finally, a brief comment by Page Smith [2]:

"I must confess that my own attitude toward lecturing was deeply influenced by my experience in teaching Dante’s "Divine Comedy" in a seminar.  When I suggested to my students that they devise some modern hells for professors-who-neglected-th eir-students.  They proposed that the professors be required to listen to lectures for all eternity.  The only point of dispute between them was whether it wold be worse torment for professors to have to listen to their own lectures or to those of an especially dull colleague.  I have never been able to feel the same way about lecturing since."

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[1] Mary Budd Rowe, "Getting Chemistry Off the Killer Course List," Journal of Chemical Education Nov. 1983: 954-956.

[2] Page Smith, Killing the Spirit: Higher Education in America (New York: Viking, 1990) 214.