Completely Rework Your Lecture Notes

From: http://teaching.berkeley.edu/compendium/suggestions/file30.html


IF YOU WANT TO:

1. Be well-prepared

2. Maintain your enthusiasm for the subject matter

3. Have your course reflect your own professional growth

YOU MAY WISH TO CONSIDER:

Completely reworking your lecture notes each time you teach the course.

"It's important to completely redo my notes each time I teach the course," says an economics professor. It helps me rethink the material so that the ideas seem fresh and new to me as well as to the students. This increases my enthusiasm for the subject matter and I think this is communicated to the students."

"My lectures change somewhat every time I teach the course," says a professor of psychology. "In this way, over a period of six to eight years, they change quite radically. This is partly because the field is changing, but it is also because my own ideas continue to develop."

Although the myth of the professor who teaches with yellowed and musty notes is almost unheard of in a major university, the importance of re-creating lecture notes each time a course is taught -- even if back-to-back within the same year -- was stressed by nearly all excellent teachers as a way of keeping themselves fresh and interested as well as interesting to the students.

Limitations on Use of Suggestion

Discipline: None
Course Level: None
Course Size: None
Mode: Lecture, primarily

Copyright 1983 by the Regents of the University of California