Chris Lloyd's Golden Tips on Effective Lecturing

You learn a few things the hard way over 20 years of lecturing. Here are some things that I hardly ever do when I am trying to...

Get Students Motivated

· Jog into class, rip the textbook in half, and scream, "Are you pumped? ARE YOU PUMPED? I CAN'T HEEEEEAR YOU!"

· Announce "you'll need this," and write the suicide prevention hotline number on the board.

· Refer to students who died while taking my class.

Establish a non-confrontational two-way learning process

· Point the overhead projector at the class. Demand each student's name, rank, and serial number.

· Ask occasional questions, but mutter "as if you gibbering morons would know" and move on before anyone can answer.

· Wear a "virtual reality" helmet and strange gloves. When someone asks a question, turn in their direction and make throttling motions with my hands.

Let students know that I am only human

· Stop in mid-lecture, frown for a moment, and then ask the class whether my butt looks fat.

· Start the lecture by dancing and lip-synching to James Brown's "Sex Machine."

· Begin class by smashing the neck off a bottle of vodka, and announce that the lecture's over when the bottle's done.

· Sprint from the room in a panic when I hear sirens outside.

· Give students the URL of my homepage.

Overcome Students Natural Fear of Maths

· Devote my math lecture to free verse about my favorite numbers and ask students to "sit back and groove".

· Tell students that they must do all their work in the base 11 number system.

· Use a complicated symbol named after myself in place of the number 10 and threaten to fail students who don't use it.

· Show a video on medieval torture implements to my calculus class and giggle throughout.