Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!burl!codas!ufcsv!gatech!mcnc!ecsvax!hes From: hes@ecsvax.UUCP (Henry Schaffer) Newsgroups: comp.edu Subject: Re: Ph.D.'s and Teaching Summary: the "lecture" - what purpose is it serving? Only after this is known can be decide on the use of overheads/handouts ... Message-ID: <4481@ecsvax.UUCP> Date: 24 Jan 88 23:16:43 GMT References: <2144@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU> <115@mccc.UUCP> <3469@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu> <834@cos.COM> Organization: NC State Univ. Lines: 86 In article <834@cos.COM>, howard@COS.COM (Howard C. Berkowitz) writes: > I give frequent technical presentations at seminars and conferences, > and am becoming increasingly furious at the demand of organizers for > advance copies of my visuals. Aside from the logistical nightmare ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ that's one kind of problem - but not the heart of the issue > which can accompany bringing 200 copies of a 40-page document on a > flight, I find that advance handouts interfere with the quality of ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > presentation. Others dislike them as well, perhaps not for the ^^^^^^^^^^^^ This is at the heart of the matter - and the quality can only be assessed after the purpose of the lecture is decided. A lecture can have a number of different purposes (maybe more than one simultaneously.) It can be inspirational, it can convey factual information, it can provide an organization of information - a viewpoint, it can teach a concept (this latter purpose can put demands on the lecturer to sense the degree of bewilderedness of the class), ... A typical academic class lecture may very well try to divide its time to serve several of these. > same reasons: > In article <2060@pdn.UUCP>, reggie@pdn.UUCP (George W. Leach) writes: > > In article <261@tmsoft.UUCP> mason@tmsoft.UUCP (Dave Mason) writes: > > > > >PRETTY BORING. I like a VERY loose teaching style... maybe some notes, > > >or a few minutes before class (often in the halls on the way to class :-) > > >thinking about what I want to cover, then a willingness to go on a > > >tangent if it seems helpful in class. > > Yup, me too. Too often I find that the person who is so organized and >> prepared with lots of view graphs, etc..... can not deviate from the prepared >> script. Too often you find TAs teaching this way. ... Is this a case of deciding that if one extreme is bad, then one should espouse the other *extreme*. > Even when I am presenting a formal paper, I am willing to deviate from > my planned presentation flow if questions (or glazed looks) during the > talk seem to dictate such a deviation. Hear, hear! If the purpose of the lecture is to get something across to the audience - then to ignore the questions/glazed looks would be silly. (You can also develop a sensitivity to "fidgiting", which has an earlier onset than glazed looks.) > There are those who complain when > the presentation does not follow the published paper; I respond only that > the presentation typically is six months more recent than the final > paper sent to the conference. I think that you're being polite - (which is probably good). > In an industrial context (I don't have sufficiently recent academic > experience to judge), if I give out advance handouts, the audience tends > to follow the paper copy, not the presentation. Many conference and > seminar organizers demand the handouts "so the attendees may take notes > on them." How real is this need? I'll happily provide notebook paper > if they need it! :-) Here is the point of my remark on purpose. Most lectures do have an informational content - At some point in you OSI lecture you probably do have a slide with a list of various standards on it - now *that* is something worth putting on a handout - perhaps even in an annotated form (and you leave off the annotations on the overhead to preserve readability.) The handout would allow the audience to get all the stuff correct and without distracting them too much from your valuable comments (no smiley next to "valuable" - it is or you wouldn't be there). The overheads you use to introduce a concept don't have the same need to be handed out. Might the organizers be satisfied with a handout which you tell them contains the material which you feel is appropriate. (I think they would, as long as you give them something decent - usually they're turned down because the speaker doesn't want to take the trouble.) > An extreme problem of advance text comes when I want to use surprise > and/or humor in the presentation, sometimes with technical material, > sometimes with flourishes. To cite an absurd but useful example ... Of course, this is something you would not include - > A lesser problem of handouts is that they may not be meaningful, or may > actively be misleading, outside the context of the presentation. I > structure my visuals as adjuncts to presentations, not as pseudo-publications. Right - so only give out those (and perhaps in modified format) that will be a help. > -- howard(Howard C. Berkowitz) @cos.com > {uunet, decuac, sun!sundc, hadron, hqda-ai}!cos!howard > (703) 883-2812 [ofc] (703) 998-5017 [home] > DISCLAIMER: I explicitly identify COS official positions. --henry schaffer n c state univ