Practicum (term 2): Simplifying the material and terminology

Another lecture in term 2 was a development of my very first guest lecture on the Vancouver housing market. This time I focused on a slightly different angle of the issue, the social outcomes of Vancouver’s lack of housing affordabilty, also highlighting the reasons behind it. This time, it was a 50 min lecture for a 300-level course with 100 students registered, and probably around 70 people attending.

As Vancouver housing is the topic of my Master’s research and at that point, I have made quite a bit of progress on it as my research project delving deeper and deeper into the topic, one of the important things I had considered more is simplifying the material and terminology that I use. In terms of a variety of lecturing styles, this time I was only able to include a few open floor questions getting students to share some of their ideas, but the time was limited, so it wasn’t a substantial part of the lecture unlike in the previous 80-minute practicum.

In preparation and during the lecture, I was always reminding myself to keep things simple and clear. And I thought it went well overall, the students were engaged and a lot of them had things to share and asked clarifying questions. The complexity of terms, however, still came up as one of the things I discussed with the course instructor who was observing me. She mentioned in the post-review session that she thought some of the terms might have been not very clear to the students (such as the distinct difference between low and highly qualified labor), and could use more explaining. This is a reminder to me to be more aware of the use of specific terms and try and provide more examples to make sure that it is clear to the students what we’re talking about.

Despite that, I still got some good feedback, the instructor for the course thought that I did well getting the students engaged and inviting them to share their ideas in the short discussion that we had. She also found my use of rhetorical questions helpful and said that I was able to draw a comprehensive picture of the issue. She has also shared with me that one of the students came up to her after the lecture and told her that they loved it, which was very nice for me to hear. I am glad I was able to connect with the students on this topic, engaging them in an academic conversation of a topic that has personal relevance to all of them, Vancouver housing, as they all live here.

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