Effective Delivery in Lectures

Today, I went for my first Corporate Communication lecture at 1100 hours. I left my room at 1055 hours and met Kwang Liang on the way. We ended up talking and slowed down our pace so by the time we arrived at the lecture theatre, it was five minutes past eleven.

Anyway, the real lecture has not started, but the lecturer is in already. He is a new lecturer and his name is Mr. Alan Griffin Downe. A Canadian-born lecturer, he was a psychologist back in Canada before he turned into the field of academia and lectured in Multimedia University in Cyberjaya for seven years. Now, he is a lecturer in Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS.

Now, what struck me most was his delivery during lectures. Unlike other lecturers, his style of lecturing is distinct, effective, amusing and straight to the point. Being a Corporate Communications lecturer, he prepared his PowerPoint presentation slides well, making good use of the multimedia facilities that were available to him. He ensured that his slides contain some pictures, and variations in the colour of words to provide necessary emphasis. His slides contained organisation charts and no long essays, which sped up understanding.

As a lecturer, he did perfectly well to fully engage with his students. One would realise that nobody fell asleep during his two-hour lecture, in which he never needed the microphone. He was not monotonous, and above all, he had the participation from all students.

He was clear and precise in what he was trying to convey, and instead of him giving answers directly, he requested for them from the students. It did not matter to him whether the answers were right or wrong; it is the idea that counts. Any inappropriate answer can be corrected there and then with a few words, but it is important to know what ideas students have so that instructors will know how to deal with the students regarding the subject that they are going to teach.

I would say that every lecturer in UTP ought to emulate Mr. Alan. There are so many lecturers there who are not able to deliver an effective lecture. Many students leave the lecture theatres often not knowing, understanding or remembering what had been taught simply because lecturers were not able to sustain the interest of their students. I have had a horrible experience seeing a lecturer’s PowerPoint slides with long paragraphs of essays in just black and white! And there are many lecturers there whose monotony in their delivery would put any insomniac to sleep. Perhaps Mr. Alan should one day give a course to these lecturers on how to improve their delivery methods, and above all, ensure that their delivery is effective. There is no point coming up with delivery methods when they fail miserably at the end of the day.

One of the most important elements of giving a good slideshow presentation is to ensure that there are no spelling or grammatical errors in your slides. Often, I have come across slides that have obvious spelling errors and they persist from the first slide till the end. Microsoft has done a good job by adding a Spelling Error Check feature in its software and yet there are still spelling errors! As far as I am concerned, the following lecturers almost never had any spelling or grammatical errors in their slides:

1. Pn. Subarna Sivapalan (Management and Humanities Department)
2. Associate Professor Dr. Hasnain Isa (Civil Engineering Department)
3. Dr. Sumathi Renganathan (Management and Humanities Department)
4. Dr. Shahrina Nordin (Management and Humanities Department)
5. Dr. Saeed Ul-Hassan (formerly Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department)
6. Pn. Ena Bhattacharyya (Management and Humanities Department)
7. Pn. Chong Su Li (Management and Humanities Department)

I have the pleasure also to announce that the following lecturers were some of those whose delivery is at least quite effective (this list is only subjected to lecturers who have taught me and exclude lecturers who conducted my tutorial sessions):

1. Pn. Subarna Sivapalan (Management and Humanities Department)
2. Associate Professor Dr. Hasnain Isa (Civil Engineering Department)
3. Dr. Sumathi Renganathan (Management and Humanities Department)
4. Dr. Shahrina Nordin (Management and Humanities Department)
5. Dr. Saeed Ul-Hassan (formerly Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department)
6. Pn. Ena Bhattacharyya (Management and Humanities Department)
7. Pn. Chong Su Li (Management and Humanities Department)
8. Dr. Asif Sadiq (Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department)
9. Dr. Narahari Marneni (Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department)
10. Associate Professor Dr. Kurian V. John (Civil Engineering Department)
11. Mr. Mubarrak Abdul Wahab (Civil Engineering Department)
12. Dr. Mohd. Yunus Nayan (Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department)
13. Mr. Muhammad Sanif Maulut (Geoscience and Petroleum Engineering Department)
14. Ms. Zuraidah Sulaiman (formerly Computer and Information Sciences Department)
15. Dr. Chandra Mohan (Chemical Engineering Department)
16. Mr. Mohd. Faisal Taha (Chemical Engineering Department)
17. Ms. Normawati Mohd. Yunus (Chemical Engineering Department)
18. Associate Professor Dr. Saied Saiedi (Civil Engineering Department)
19. Mr. Azizul Buang (Chemical Engineering Department)
20. Mr. Alan Griffin Downe (Management and Humanities Department)

All right, so we can see that I did indeed have some good lecturers to begin with for my past four semesters in UTP, and for that I am indeed grateful. Now, let us have the subjects in which I dreaded most because the delivery was simply apathetic. Let’s have the Hall of Shame:

1. Health, Safety and Environment (one of the lecturers was a Professor from the Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department who literally drove away students from his class because of his sedative delivery)
2. Geology (apart from Associate Professor Asykuri and Associate Professor Dr. Nasiman Sapari, the others were plain boring with slides that spelt absolute boredom, with aquamarine words in red background)
3. Principles of Solid Mechanics (although the associate professor was very knowledgeable in the subject, he was unfortunately not very adept in his delivery)
4. Engineering Mathematics 1 – Precalculus (this lecturer is also knowledgeable in the subject, but his monotony would drive every student mad)
5. Concrete Technology (this lecturer who took my first two classes did a good job in giving an introduction to concrete, but during his lecture on aggregates, he failed to sustain the students’ interest, resulting to an uneventful two hours. The ten-minute break in between lessons was as if a gift from God. His monotony would, as said, send any insomniac to sleep)
6. Geomatics (not only was the associate professor’s delivery of mediocre standards, his slides were confused, and his slide content (such as some formulae) sometimes differed from what he had written on the whiteboard but insisted that they are similar. The greatest thing was that he left us three chapters for us to study on our own because there was supposedly not enough time to cover those chapters, and they were examined during examinations!)
7. Structured Programming (the first lecturer was good, but the second one kept thinking that we have a good knowledge in basic programming and kept harping on with his slides without making sure that we understood what he was trying to say)

So here goes. There are certainly lots of lecturers out there who need help to convey their information effectively to students. They may be very knowledgeable, but it is still possible that they may not possess the needed communication skills to engage with their audiences and to obtain positive feedback.

I am sure these Hall of Shame lecturers can do much better, if only they realise how much damage they have done now!