The job of the lecturer is to teach a concept or an idea to an audience. However, many lecturers often forget this and instead focus on just the lecture instead of the audience (to the point that some lecturers do not even look at the audience). Needless to say, focusing on just the lecture often makes the lecture itself a failure. The audience's understanding of a topic is the goal. To maximize or optimize this level of understanding, it is very important to routinely observe the audience, gauge their level of interest and/or connection to the lecture, and to adjust the lecture accordingly. In this chapter, we will focus on the very important mechanism of observing the level of interest of the audience as well as on the process of correctly interpreting visual and verbal feedback.

NOISE LEVELS

As a lecturer, your job and duty is to maximize the quality of the learning environment for the audience. One important factor that controls the quality of a lecture is the noise level in the room. If you have ever sat in the back of a noisy lecture hall, you will know how hard it is to understand the lecturer amongst all the noise. As a result, noise anywhere among the audience is something that should not be tolerated in any way.