So far we have discussed the nuances of giving a lecture in any type of setting. However, in this chapter, we will focus on the issues that can arise while teaching in university, college, or any other type of setting which requires multiple lectures and possibly a set of tests and exams.

With multiple lectures, it is possible to give one bad lecture and still recover by giving several excellent lectures afterwards. In other words, there is more room for lecturing errors than the single-lecture case. As a result, teaching multi-lecture courses is an excellent way of polishing your lecturing abilities. Furthermore, having to evaluate the audience/students gives them the incentive to listen to your lectures. This gives you a natural advantage in attracting the audience to your lectures. The exact method, type, and difficulty of the evaluation (i.e. test, exam, etc.) can be used to control the learning experience of the audience by either comforting them with a relatively straightforward test or by shocking them with a difficult test. In fact, in many cases it makes sense to use a combination of straightforward and difficult questions.

The following sections will take a more detailed look at several important multi-lecture course issues.

THE FIRST LECTURE

As with the first few minutes of a lecture, the first lecture of a multi-lecture academic course is also very important. It is during this lecture that the students in the class get their permanent impression of the lecturer.