IF YOU WANT TO:
Explicitly calling attention to the most important ideas in each lecture.
"I began to emphasize the main points about ten years ago," says one political science professor, "when I discovered that you can't rely on undergraduates to intuitively know what the most important points are. You have to tell them."
Faculty members in several disciplines stress the need to call students' attention to the most important ideas being presented. Some teachers announce the importance of an idea before presenting it, saying such things as, "This is really important, so you have to be alert." Other teachers emphasize the most important ideas when summarizing, saying, "The most important thing to remember here is..." or "This is so important that every one of you should have it engraved on a gold plaque and hung over your bed!" as one professor of computer science puts it. "There is no point in students having to guess what is important if I can tell them," he says.
Limitations on Use of Suggestion
Copyright 1983 by the Regents of the University of California