Speaker 1: Hi everyone, so welcome to the video. Today it's all about lecture prep. So it came up in the comments could I chat a little bit about how I would actually sit down and prepare a lecture. So of course there's no right or wrong way to do this but these are my lecture notes from my very first ever lecture course at a university. So a few years ago I was allocated half of the first year lecture physics course for the first years and I was going to teach alongside a professor. The professor had previously taught the whole of the class and my job was to come in and to take over half and honestly I was so lucky because the professor was super friendly, really helpful and one of the first things they did was to give me the slides that had been used in previous years. So basically this video is a little kind of journey I guess into how I got ready to prepare to teach my first ever lecture class which was yeah a few years ago now. So the first thing I did was I worked through the lecture material that I'd inherited from the academic who had previously taught that part of the class. So I went through all of the content, I worked my way through all of the slides and actually this was the summer before I was scheduled to start teaching that semester where I actually made handwritten notes as if I were a student. So I worked it through because I really wanted to make sure that I could see all the physics ideas I was going to need to teach all the concepts and that I'd work through the key derivations. I also got the module descriptor so if you are taking over a module that's already been taught at the uni, there'll be a module form. It will have things like the student requirements, learning objectives, was used in previous years, so that can be a really useful guide as you're getting your materials ready together to plan your lectures. I also got the course textbook because I wanted to make sure that any notation I was going to use in the lectures would match up with the textbook, so as not to confuse the students. So that's kind of all the basic content gathering, kind of getting all the information together that you have about that particular lecture course. I would say it's a bit different now when I prepare a lecture course for the first time that's not been taught before, but today I'll just stick on how do I get ready for a lecture course if I'm taking it over from another academic so there's already material that I can look at. So once I've got all the previous material, I've worked through it myself, I've got the module descriptor, I've got the textbook, I then look at how many weeks I'm going to need to teach for and when do I need to teach certain things by. So in this particular course the students had an exam halfway through the first semester and then another exam at the end of the semester. So I had to make sure that I taught certain topics before that mid-semester exam and of course to make sure that they had all their topics covered by the end of semester. And I needed to make sure that I was going to be able to work my lectures alongside the professor who was still teaching half of the course. So his lectures needed to happen at certain times and therefore my material needed to happen at certain times. And actually that gave me then quite a strong framework for when I would need to teach specifically each topic. And then it was the fun part. So then it was time to design actually lecture by lecture how I wanted to teach those physics ideas. And I think this is really fun because I think you know as academics we all communicate slightly differently, we all have different teaching styles, different teaching personalities, and I knew that I wanted to change a little bit the way I was going to deliver that course just to do it in my own particular style. So I worked it through and then I looked at it lecture by lecture. I worked out what were the scientific ideas, concepts and problems that I needed to show in each lecture. And then I tried to work out okay what was going to be an activity, what was going to be a video, could I put any demonstrations into the class, and what was going to be maybe a handwritten derivation. And all of my allocated lectures were actually all two hours long. So timetabling had given me two two-hour lectures each week. And two hours is a long time, A for me to stand talking at the front of the class, and it's a very long time for somebody to listen to the same voice. So I really wanted to make sure that as I planned my lectures I changed the rhythm of the class. I mean I didn't want to give a two-hour long monologue with just me talking at the front of the class because you know that is not going to be interesting for anyone to have to sit through. So I planned out my lectures accordingly. I would have maybe a fun video playing when the students walked into the lecture theater, or maybe I'd start with a really kind of fun idea or interesting scientific concept. Then I might do a derivation or a piece of mathematics. Then I tried to have an activity so something where the students didn't have to listen to me and they could work through an activity maybe in a pair or by themselves. I would always always have breaks so two hours is a long time to have a whole class with no breaks at all. And actually at the beginning of the course, I had a really good idea of what the each lecture I always showed the students the roadmap of what was coming up in the next two hours. You know I wanted them to know when the activities were, when the me bits of lecturing were, when the kind of the breaks were, just so they could also pace themselves throughout the lecture. And I used videos quite a bit so I'd play clips of other scientists speaking or clips of other things happening, experiments, and again that mixed up the rhythm of the lecture. It gave the students something else to watch and actually a different voice to listen to for a few minutes before they had to come back to hearing me continue the rest of the class. So that was my plan you know I worked through each of these lectures across the summer. I worked out bit by bit what was going to be each of these classes and how I was going to deliver it and and then yeah then I gave the class. And being a lecturer is definitely a continual learning experience because some things worked really well, some things maybe I could have changed the way I presented an idea or the mathematical notation but that's what being a lecturer is all about because it means then you can change things from year to year. So if these were my first year lecture notes I'll include a clip or a picture of my second year and my third year lecture notes. So I've taught this course now for a few years and each year I change the slide slightly, I change the video clips I use slightly, and I actually keep my handwritten notes that I make during a lecture. So sometimes when I'm teaching I handwrite the derivation and then I write the derivation and then I write the text. I keep all those notes so I can see year on year how I taught the material, what my notes were and what questions came up during that particular lecture. And it means that I can then work to refine it for the next year. And as I said colleagues are brilliant so asking a colleague for help or how they would plan a particular topic or if you can sitting in on somebody else's lecture can give you really good ideas for how you want to plan your lecture. And I think one thing we do need to think about is that we need to think about actually is when we prepare our lectures is actually are we expecting the students to handwrite or are they going to be on their computers typing what we say or are they going to have lecture notes already given to them so they can just listen to us. So what we did in this particular course was the students got like a basic lecture slide set. So in the week one they got a set of slides that covered all the key ideas that were coming up in the lecture course. But then week by week we would use different slides as we taught them which meant that they would see slightly more detail on the ideas and there'd be new examples for them to be working through. There'd be new tutorial sheets. So you know in our case we expected the students to have had a look at the slides beforehand and then come to class and then make some notes on the additional slides and material that we were showing in that lecture theatre. And then actually we also recorded our lectures so that students afterwards could go away and watch the recording and they could make notes in their own time if they wanted to. So essentially it gave the student free choice whether they wanted to make notes live in the lecture theatre or whether they wanted to maybe wait and then watch the lecture again at home and make lecture notes the second time around having been able to listen to it just the first time. And I think that can really change how you prepare your lecture material because actually when I was planning my handwritten derivations, if I was showing them something I don't know like electric charge from dipoles, if I was working it through line by line, actually I would have been able to get them to actually just a few sides of A4 could take you know quite a long time to teach you know 40 minutes 45 minutes because I'm explaining it line by line and I'm writing it and the students have to write it so there's a natural pace that you can't go faster at, faster than if you're handwriting material. So yeah I think it's hard the first time that you're preparing a lecture to know quite how much material you're going to cover in each lecture theatre session. But I'm sure you'll be able to do that. So obviously I had a rough idea because I could see how the course had been taught in the previous year but equally if I was changing things slightly or maybe introducing an activity or doing a handwritten derivation that was normally shown on slides, I could change the rhythm of that lecture and the time it was going to take me to teach that lecture material. You know everything's not going to work first time, you can do all the planning in the world and you'll get into the classroom and something might happen you know usually the IT equipment is pretty good at my university so I'm going to have to do that. But I did have one case where the laptop wouldn't connect properly to the smart technology, the computer in the room wasn't working, I literally just had like a visualizer and some pens so I had to change how I was delivering that class very much on the spot in front of a hundred students. So things like that do happen and coping with things that happen live in lectures probably is a video in its own right. So maybe if you want to see that video do let me know and I'll do like a video on that. How I survived lectures when things go wrong, a compilation. But do let me know in the comments how you like preparing for class, do you have a particular way that you get ready in order to teach a lecture. If you're new to the channel then hi my name is Caroline, I'm a UK based university physics lecturer. I'm posting every week at the moment so for more uni content and lecturer stuff please do like and subscribe, leave me a comment, it's always lovely to read your comments. But yeah I should go back and read some of your comments. I'll see you in the next video. back now to doing a bit more lecture prep so have a good week look after yourselves stay safe and I will see you in a week's time bye you