Today’s optional module of the course on developing teaching skills was entitled giving an effective lecture. Victor Morgan, who is a senior lecturer in history at the University of East Anglia (UEA), gave a really entertaining and at the same time a very formative presentation. He has been giving lectures since 1967, so his presentation skills were right where they were supposed to be, and he made some jokes that were really funny too. Due to the interactive format of the presentation there was not so much interaction with other colleagues in single groups as in the previous modules; we worked as a whole group.
A brief introduction of ourselves in small groups, during which I learned a couple of new words, was followed by an open discussion led by the lecturer through the menu he prepared for us. I took many notes and I should probably use them to write this post, but I will try to list the main points and some of the take home messages I can remember. I have never heard before the term flipped lecture and I found it very appealing. Moreover, Simon Lancaster, who is a senior lecturer in chemistry at the UEA, in collaboration with David Read, who is a principal teaching fellow in chemistry at the University of Southampton, have been using this concept of flipping teaching for some time. If you are interested in it here is a link to some reading on this topic:
http://www.rsc.org/Education/EiC/issues/2013september/flipped-classroom-inverting-lectures.asp
now I am going to read more about flipped lectures and not only about that. We were also introduced to the importance of making jokes (the impersonation of Marlon Brando from the Godfather performed by the lecturer wasn’t so bad..), having breaks (and I am not writing about the coffee/tea break we had, although it was important to have that one as well) and changing the tone of your voice to stress some key learning points (using repetitions and without shouting at the students).
Then, we were introduced to how to deal with some aspects regarding the students’ discipline and the process of writing a lecture using different styles and software packages. Finally I learned that the UEA hour for a lecture has been fixed to 50 minutes, which makes the preparation of the structure and the rehearsal of the timings of the lecture very important. However, those 50 minutes can be reduced even to 45, making a flipped teaching approach to work more effectively.
The following link is kind of interesting
http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2014/11/excellent-graphic-feauring-10-powerful.html
Andrea Catte 
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