Podium Style

Major Elements of Podium Presentation

1. Content
   There must be a substantive core to the presentation. The instructor has important information to impart.
   
   
2. Coherent organization
   The lecture components should flow logically.
   
   
3. Clarity of expression
   Concise, deliberate language, including grammar, is critical to retain student attention.

Indeed, these three elements also serve as the same criteria employed by the instructor in evaluating the students' written work. Hence, they should be articulated at the outset of the course, so that students will begin incorporating them in their appraisal of the teacher's podium presentation and later in their own written work.

Four Additional Pedagogical Considerations

1. Get personal.
   Anecdotes about one's own academic/personal life help students to identify with a noble, humanistic tradition still extant in the university today.
2. Become familiar with students' names and written work.
   Seating charts and frequent writing exercises facilitate both. Do not allow your reader's evaluation of student work to diminish your own familiarity with each student.
3. Be active & use visuals.
   Ever mindful of diverse learning styles, visuals enhance podium presentations. In history courses, the chalkboard offers space for timelines and the lecture's skeletal form, thereby providing adequate time for the students to emulate the active instructor by copious note-taking.
   
   Note: are not the skills required for active note-taking an essential step in the learning process? If so, is it possible that the hi-tech computerized presentation involving graphics and bullet-point encourages student passivity because it's slick and appears ready-made? Contrast this click-of-the-button immediacy with the more traditional instructor who actually is busily creating language on the chalkboard, thereby affording his clientele time to emulate his activity.
   
   

4. Challenge passionately
   Stir the pot of controversy from the podium. Encourage students to stretch intellectually.

   Passion is not the exclusive bailiwick of strutters, shouters, and screamers who occupy the podium. Students speak passionately to me about some plain spoken teachers who never raise their voices.

Beware The Ego Trap

The podium occupant should take with a grain of salt any oral encomium of praise proffered by students, especially if there is a dearth of frequent written work reflecting the reading and lecture. The authenticity of student respect/affection is usually related to the course's rigor. Otherwise, talk is cheap and both parties-instructor and students-feel it.

 

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