Whether you are giving a mini-lecture, supervising a laboratory session, leading a discussion or meeting students in your office, presenting information is an indispensable part of all of the above activities. Major skills include:

1. Speak clearly

• use of a common language
• correct pronunciation and intonation;
• appropriate volume so that everyone in the room can hear you;
• a steady but not fast pace of speaking with appropriate pauses.

2. Organize your information and convey your organization to  students

Organize your information

Organization is as important as clear delivery. Having a purpose in mind helps you to organize your ideas and suggests a means.

For example:

• If you want to describe an organism (purpose), you would list its individual features, moving from feature to feature (means);
• If you are analyzing a problem for causes (purpose), you may list the causes in a logical sequence, from simple to complex, or from specific to general (means);
• If you are going to summarize the learning of the day (purpose), you move chronically from the start to finish, highlighting all the major topics covered in the session (means);
• You may use contrast or pros and cons (means) to argue your position (purpose);
• To illustrate the proper operation of a machine in an engineering class (purpose), you separate all the steps in the process and present them in the order in which they occur (the process order approach, means).

Convey your organization to students

Stating your purpose and organization "up-front" to your students helps to prepare them for new learning.

For example:

• "What I’m going to do is to list the steps of the operation so that you know how it works."
• "There are at least three ways to argue against this issue. Let's explore each one of them in further detail."
• "Let's look at the features of X."

Try your best to carry out a purpose at a time to avoid confusion.

 

3. Connect ideas and use multiple sources of input

• Connect ideas

Give students clear signals when you are making a transition from one purpose to another.

 

For example:

• "What I'd like to do next is focus on..."
• "By this time, you all understand how this process works. Let's see how to apply it in situation A.."
• "Let’s go back and look at..."
• "Now I’d like to move on to..."

• Use multiple sources of input

Students tend to remember images longer than they remember words. Vivid images of appropriate examples or analogies have a lasting effect on students' memorization and help them comprehend.

 

For example:

• In describing velocity, a physics instructor uses the example of a speeding bullet;
• A video tape showing a small group in discussion can speak much more than a verbal description of the discussion process;
• Charts and graphs are always useful to depict differences, or to help readers to make comparisons and contrasts.

Further Readings

1. T. Pica, "Presenting information to students" in Teaching matters, skills & strategies for international teaching assistants, New York: Newbury House, 1990, pp. 16-21.

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