IF YOU WANT TO:
Increasing the amount of eye-contact you have with the students during your lectures.
"I look carefully at students' faces," says one history professor. "You can't teach a bored or confused class, so if I see a glazed look which suggests the students are not following me, I interrupt my lecture and say, `We may be going too fast...,' or `This point doesn't seem to be clear to some of you...'"
Some faculty members prefer to direct their questions to the entire class; others find it effective to call on students by name, interrupting their lectures to say, "Jerry, you look like you had a question," or "Several of you looked puzzled. Sally, can you tell me what doesn't seem to be clear?"
One psychology professor says that he was once assigned a room so poorly lit that he could not see the students from the platform until he moved down to the floor level. In teaching in a new room, note any physical obstacles that may interfere with your eye contact with students and make whatever changes are possible.
A professor of English says that because he is very near-sighted, he has learned to listen carefully and pick up on auditory cues which may indicate that the students are bored or confused. "I find that the rustling of papers or the scraping and squeaking of chairs are excellent indicators that students are having difficulty," he says.
Limitations on Use of Suggestion
Copyright 1983 by the Regents of the University of California