This observation is of my TA supervisor at the course for which I later gave the guest lecture. I came to one of the lectures before my guest lecture to get a better feel for the dynamics of the class and the format of the instructor’s lectures. I have also used it as an observation opportunity.

This instructor has her own teaching style, which I overall enjoy, but in this lecture one thing that really struck me was the lack of any text on the slides, with the majority of them only containing visuals, pictures, drawings, maps, etc. There were no key points or summary highlights. That is one thing I was interested in discussing with the instructor in our post-observation meeting to check in with her about how much of her slide design was intentional.

She told me that she consciously excludes key content points from the slides as an incentive for students to come to class and take notes, rather than just relying on the slides posted online. I find that approach to be very interesting, as I definitely structure my lectures very differently with the slides being the reference point, not just for the students, but for me as well. And for her to keep track of the material and examples, the instructor uses flashcard that she refers to sometimes during the lecture, it goes very smoothly.

While I am not sure I will use this approach for one of my guest lectures, as there’s not as much room for me to experiment, but I am definitely interested in trying out this lecture format with the use of slides for illustrations only when I am teaching a full course. It would be also very interesting to collect students’ feedback on whether they thought that this structure stimulated them to attend and listen carefully or whether they found it harder as the materials for post-class review were more limited. It would also be more of a personal challenge for me to keep track of the things I want to say since I never usually use any notes or flashcards having only slides as my point of reference.