Lectures can be an excellent way to communicate complex information to your audience. Good lectures can open your audience’s minds, and great lectures can change them. That said, lectures are notorious for being long, belabored, and, worst of all, boring. This is because, by nature, a lecture often consists of a group of people listening to one person talk for a long time.
When your lecture is boring, your audience might tune you out entirely. You might have the most helpful information, but it won’t matter if your audience doesn’t care. Don’t let this happen to you. Instead, incorporate a few of the following methods into your next lecture to make it as engaging as possible.
1. Include Good Visuals
Thanks to the prevalence of PowerPoint, visuals in lectures are nearly ubiquitous these days. But just slapping any old photos onto a slide won’t improve it. At worst, it can make your presentation more confusing. Sure, you might enjoy pictures of adorable kittens—who don’t? But just because you want something or suspect your audience might doesn’t mean you should automatically include it.
It’s important to make sure you include the right visuals. This means visuals that are clear, relevant and timed well. Clarity means your visuals are easily legible: not blurry, improperly zoomed, too big or small. Relevance goes back to the kittens — you want your visual’s subject matter to match your point. This covers timing, too. That is to say, include relevant images of the bean-roasting process during the roasting section of your “Espresso Best Practices” lecture.
Myriads of online sites will provide you with the kind of high-quality images you’re looking for. Some are free, and some are paid. You could digitally capture images using a screenshot app. Rather than including a generic image of computer software, you can include images of the software you’re trying to explain. The same goes for data or other information specific to your presentation.
2. Get Your Audience Involved
One of the easiest ways to engage your audience is to get them engaged! No, before you get the veil out, not like that. Sprinkle in moments of audience participation throughout your lecture. The good news is that this can actually be pretty easy and, best of all, effective.
Questions and surveys are some of the easiest and most effective ways to get your audience to participate. This can be as simple and low-tech as asking your audience to raise their hands if they relate to a question. You might ask, “Show of hands: how many people here drink espresso daily?”
You could also create a straw poll ahead of time and ask your audience to participate live by using ir phones. Then, in real-time, get feedback on a question like, “How many people think espresso is better than coffee?” Live straw polls are particularly interesting because they show your audience where everyone in the room stateroom a given issue.
Polls, questions, and other intellectual games are great, but participation doesn’t have to be static. Increase involvement by getting your audience up and moving! Incorporate stretches, vocal activities, or samples of relevant materials throughout your lecture. Again, keep these relevant, like small dessert samples in your baking lecture or annunciation practice in your lecture on speech. Find and incorporate the intersection between your subject matter and sensory experience to get your audience more involved.
3. Tell a Good Story
People love stories. This fact seems wired into human DNA as vocal, social creatures. Take advantage of this wiring, like with visuals, and weave narrative elements into your lecture. There are many ways to do this, but one of the most effective is centering your lecture’s narrative around a character.
A character doesn’t have to be an actual person, although it certainly could be. Including a character means creating an identifiable entity through which the subject of your lecture is perceived. This may sound esoteric, but one of the simplest ways to characterize it is to frame a problem that wants a solution.
For example, say you’re given a lecture on the importance of sleep. You’ve already engaged the audience by asking for a show of hands for “Who here feels like they get enough sleep?” A few hands show here, some there, but predictably, most stay down. You follow up by asking, “Okay, now who here uses their phone before bed?” A wave of hands rises across the room, accompanied by some uncomfortable coughs and chuckles.
Your audience now involved, you explain that your research team set out to understand the relationship between phone use and sleep quality. “And,” you add, “what we found wasn’t pretty.” In this moment, you’ve created characters. The audience is the city’s shared protagonists; the pho:e, its villain. The conflict identified and your audience invested in its resolution, you continue the narrative that is your lecture.
Investment Is Key
In most cases, making your lecture more engaging matches your audience’s investment with your own. Unless you’ve begrudgingly accepted the role of lecturer, you’re probably invested in the information you’re presenting. However, the same can’t necessarily be said of your audience. Using some of the methods listed here will improve the quality of your lecture and increase the chance your audience will engage with, genuinely enjoy, and learn from your lecture.
