Tip 1 might be carrying more than its numbering suggests. Knowing the genre isn't only tactical, a way to not get your ass handed to you by philosophers. The genre is a contract about what kind of attention to bring: how much ambiguity to tolerate, when to expect the point, whether interruption is welcome, what counts as proof. Get the contract wrong and the audience listens with the wrong instrument, and their confusion looks like a failure to understand when it's really a failure to have been told how to listen.Medicine runs this badly all the time, in the other direction. We give discharge instructions as if they were a lecture, informed consent as if it were a data transfer, bad news as if it were a status update. The words are usually correct. But the form has already told the patient how to receive them, and often it told them wrong. So maybe a good talk doesn't just explain well. It picks the room, real or implied, where the explanation can actually land.
I agree with everything except opening by saying "nice to be here." I think talks, including academic ones, work best with a start that wakes everybody up nad gets them focused.
I agree with not stopping to ask if people understand, but for a different reason: most people will be too embarrassed or polite to speak up and say they're confused, so it's just not a useful way to gauge understanding.
I think if you really want to check for understanding during a talk, it's better to poll the audience with a quick quiz ("if this theory is true, which of these two predictions would it make?").
I started my quest to become a better public speaker about 16 years ago by watching remarkable lecture series by remarkable professors on academicearth. One of them was you, Paul.
In case someone finds this useful, a few more recommendations from my old "Teaching Statement" back from my academic years:
1. Be interested in your student
In the center of my teaching philosophy you will find the student, with his or her unique background, knowledge, misconceptions, values, talents, and ideas. That is why you will often hear me ask students questions during my lectures. Not only does this focus on the student help me to adjust my delivery to the student’s background, it is the most effective way to motivate a person. This principle also gives rise to my criteria for self-evaluation. What will the students remember from my lecture after leaving the classroom? A week from now? Even later in life? These are the questions I always keep in mind. It is not about how knowledgeable, smart, or experienced I come across.
2. Have a clear message
Every lecture I prepare has to have one clear message, for example, “The brain is a network and we can map it in living humans using MRI.” I actually write the message on a separate slide or whiteboard and repeat it throughout the lecture. The message always has to be clear to me first and the whole story I am telling is there to support this message. Following this rule will prevent both the student and the teacher from getting lost in details and losing sight of the big picture.
3. Make it hands-on
While tutoring undergraduate students at the University of Würzburg and graduate students at UCSF, I have many times observed a qualitative shift in understanding and motivation that happens when a student puts a sample into a portable MRI device and observes the resulting signal or operates a clinical MRI scanner for the first time. Hands-on learning is an excellent educational method for a small setting. You will also likely see me carrying a bag full of props to most of my lectures.
4. Make it fascinating
Learning has to be fun. That is why I interact with the students, I surprise them, and I make them think. For example, when discussing the spectrum of different wavelengths used in medical imaging, from the radio waves in MRI to gamma rays in nuclear medicine, I ask the students: “Why aren’t the wavelengths of clinical ultrasound on this spectrum?”—leading them to a “eureka” realization that ultrasound is simply not electromagnetic radiation. I also use my artistic skills to create humorous cartoons and use videos that in a memorable way illustrate the subject matter. You can see an example of my educational artwork on my webpage: http://www.olga-tymofiyeva.com/art.
Regarding job talks: the advice to graduate students to be sure to attend them is crucial (if obvious - the grad student who doesn't figure this out for themself has bigger problems). In my department what we used to do routinely was book the room with the job talk for the hour after the talk and tell grad students they are expected to stay after the talk, where (as soon as job candidate left the room) we would convene an immediate discussion of how the job talk went. Not an assessment of the candidate for the job or a discussion of the quality of the research presented, but a conversation specifically about the talk itself as an effective or ineffective job talk. With it so fresh in everyone's mind it was a great opportunity to get students to think concretely about what good and less good talks look like.
Something I’ve used for ‘useful but not overpowering’ slides is to have a single sentence on each one, which you use has a jumping off point. Kinda like the topic sentence of a paragraph. The speaker gets a reminder and so stays on track, and the audience get the structure of the slides.
When I first started speaking publicly, I was terrible and didn't know it. The fix wasn't a course or a book. It was swallowing my ego and practicing in front of my own colleagues — the people who already knew my work, already knew where I was weak, and would tell me the truth instead of being polite about it.
That's a brutal room to practice in. Your pride takes the hit before the audience ever does. But it's also the only room where the feedback is honest enough to actually change something. Strangers will clap politely and let you keep being mediocre. Peers won't.
Your point about the audience being on your side is right, and it's also why the peer-practice thing works — you're rehearsing for the friendly room with the unfriendliest version of it first. By the time you're in front of strangers, you've already survived the people least inclined to let you off easy.
I'd add one thing to your list: most people skip the practice round because it's humiliating, not because it doesn't work. It works. That's exactly why it's humiliating.
Terry Vermeylen — author of The Input Effect: Master What You Control, Maximize What You Get
Many years ago I was asked by a colleague gave a class at a local university on a subject I was expert in, and it turned out to be one of the worst and most embarrassing moments of my career. I still cringe and shake my head when I think of it some 20 years later. Your advice would have made all the difference--along with a double pre-presentation dose of Propranolol and Xanax. Love your work, man.
So many good tips! Tucked 12 nicely away into the back of my mind. Also, it took me way too long (ironically) to learn 4.
Curious of your (and other people's) opinion on using a contents slide in academic talks?
I've never understood what they help with? If the talk is short, seems like a waste of precious temporal real estate. If the talk is long, I forget what the sections are going to be anyway. Personally, it felt like an excuse for a speaker to not link the slides together and just jump from topic to topic.
Then again, there is every chance I'm missing something?
Tip 1 might be carrying more than its numbering suggests. Knowing the genre isn't only tactical, a way to not get your ass handed to you by philosophers. The genre is a contract about what kind of attention to bring: how much ambiguity to tolerate, when to expect the point, whether interruption is welcome, what counts as proof. Get the contract wrong and the audience listens with the wrong instrument, and their confusion looks like a failure to understand when it's really a failure to have been told how to listen.Medicine runs this badly all the time, in the other direction. We give discharge instructions as if they were a lecture, informed consent as if it were a data transfer, bad news as if it were a status update. The words are usually correct. But the form has already told the patient how to receive them, and often it told them wrong. So maybe a good talk doesn't just explain well. It picks the room, real or implied, where the explanation can actually land.
I agree with everything except opening by saying "nice to be here." I think talks, including academic ones, work best with a start that wakes everybody up nad gets them focused.
I agree with not stopping to ask if people understand, but for a different reason: most people will be too embarrassed or polite to speak up and say they're confused, so it's just not a useful way to gauge understanding.
I think if you really want to check for understanding during a talk, it's better to poll the audience with a quick quiz ("if this theory is true, which of these two predictions would it make?").
This is so great! (So is Victor's)
3&4 are so underappreciated. Especially if there will be Q&A, shorter is always better.
>You can break the rules, then—but best to know what the rules are first.
Reminded me of “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist,” which is a delightful Picasso quote
I started my quest to become a better public speaker about 16 years ago by watching remarkable lecture series by remarkable professors on academicearth. One of them was you, Paul.
In case someone finds this useful, a few more recommendations from my old "Teaching Statement" back from my academic years:
1. Be interested in your student
In the center of my teaching philosophy you will find the student, with his or her unique background, knowledge, misconceptions, values, talents, and ideas. That is why you will often hear me ask students questions during my lectures. Not only does this focus on the student help me to adjust my delivery to the student’s background, it is the most effective way to motivate a person. This principle also gives rise to my criteria for self-evaluation. What will the students remember from my lecture after leaving the classroom? A week from now? Even later in life? These are the questions I always keep in mind. It is not about how knowledgeable, smart, or experienced I come across.
2. Have a clear message
Every lecture I prepare has to have one clear message, for example, “The brain is a network and we can map it in living humans using MRI.” I actually write the message on a separate slide or whiteboard and repeat it throughout the lecture. The message always has to be clear to me first and the whole story I am telling is there to support this message. Following this rule will prevent both the student and the teacher from getting lost in details and losing sight of the big picture.
3. Make it hands-on
While tutoring undergraduate students at the University of Würzburg and graduate students at UCSF, I have many times observed a qualitative shift in understanding and motivation that happens when a student puts a sample into a portable MRI device and observes the resulting signal or operates a clinical MRI scanner for the first time. Hands-on learning is an excellent educational method for a small setting. You will also likely see me carrying a bag full of props to most of my lectures.
4. Make it fascinating
Learning has to be fun. That is why I interact with the students, I surprise them, and I make them think. For example, when discussing the spectrum of different wavelengths used in medical imaging, from the radio waves in MRI to gamma rays in nuclear medicine, I ask the students: “Why aren’t the wavelengths of clinical ultrasound on this spectrum?”—leading them to a “eureka” realization that ultrasound is simply not electromagnetic radiation. I also use my artistic skills to create humorous cartoons and use videos that in a memorable way illustrate the subject matter. You can see an example of my educational artwork on my webpage: http://www.olga-tymofiyeva.com/art.
practical useful
Regarding job talks: the advice to graduate students to be sure to attend them is crucial (if obvious - the grad student who doesn't figure this out for themself has bigger problems). In my department what we used to do routinely was book the room with the job talk for the hour after the talk and tell grad students they are expected to stay after the talk, where (as soon as job candidate left the room) we would convene an immediate discussion of how the job talk went. Not an assessment of the candidate for the job or a discussion of the quality of the research presented, but a conversation specifically about the talk itself as an effective or ineffective job talk. With it so fresh in everyone's mind it was a great opportunity to get students to think concretely about what good and less good talks look like.
Something I’ve used for ‘useful but not overpowering’ slides is to have a single sentence on each one, which you use has a jumping off point. Kinda like the topic sentence of a paragraph. The speaker gets a reminder and so stays on track, and the audience get the structure of the slides.
Beautifully written.
When I first started speaking publicly, I was terrible and didn't know it. The fix wasn't a course or a book. It was swallowing my ego and practicing in front of my own colleagues — the people who already knew my work, already knew where I was weak, and would tell me the truth instead of being polite about it.
That's a brutal room to practice in. Your pride takes the hit before the audience ever does. But it's also the only room where the feedback is honest enough to actually change something. Strangers will clap politely and let you keep being mediocre. Peers won't.
Your point about the audience being on your side is right, and it's also why the peer-practice thing works — you're rehearsing for the friendly room with the unfriendliest version of it first. By the time you're in front of strangers, you've already survived the people least inclined to let you off easy.
I'd add one thing to your list: most people skip the practice round because it's humiliating, not because it doesn't work. It works. That's exactly why it's humiliating.
Terry Vermeylen — author of The Input Effect: Master What You Control, Maximize What You Get
Many years ago I was asked by a colleague gave a class at a local university on a subject I was expert in, and it turned out to be one of the worst and most embarrassing moments of my career. I still cringe and shake my head when I think of it some 20 years later. Your advice would have made all the difference--along with a double pre-presentation dose of Propranolol and Xanax. Love your work, man.
So many good tips! Tucked 12 nicely away into the back of my mind. Also, it took me way too long (ironically) to learn 4.
Curious of your (and other people's) opinion on using a contents slide in academic talks?
I've never understood what they help with? If the talk is short, seems like a waste of precious temporal real estate. If the talk is long, I forget what the sections are going to be anyway. Personally, it felt like an excuse for a speaker to not link the slides together and just jump from topic to topic.
Then again, there is every chance I'm missing something?