IF YOU WANT TO:
Beginning each lecture by letting the students know what you are going to talk about and why.
An engineering professor refers to this as his "battle plan." "At the beginning of the hour, I give them a battle plan so they know where the discussion is going and can follow it more easily," he says. "For example, I tell them that I'm going to discuss such-and-such a topic for the first twenty minutes, show them how to use it in the next twenty minutes, and then take questions in the last ten minutes. By laying out exactly what your are going to do, you eliminate a lot of student confusion. You don't want students spending an hour wondering, `why is he talking about that?' or `What does that have to do with anything?' instead of concentrating on what you have to say."
Many excellent teachers cite the old adage, "Tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em; tell 'em; and then tell 'em what you've told 'em." Although it may appear to be an over simplification in the case of lectures on complex subjects, the general principle is a good one which can be adapted to major topics within a lecture as well as to the overall lecture itself.
Limitations on Use of Suggestion
Copyright 1983 by the Regents of the University of California