INTRODUCTION

What is evolutionary psychology? The answer to this question is complicated by the fact that the term “evolutionary psychology” is commonly used in two distinct senses. In one sense, evolutionary psychology is simply the study of human behavior and psychology from an evolutionary perspective. In this sense, evolutionary psychology is a field of inquiry, a loose confederation of research programs that differ significantly in theoretical and methodological commitments. These diverse research programs attempt to explain a wide variety of phenomena, ranging from foraging and birth spacing in traditional hunter-gatherer societies to encephalization (the progressive increase in brain size relative to body size in the human lineage) and the evolution of altruism and language. What unites these research programs is not a shared commitment to specific theories regarding the evolution of human behavior and psychology, but only a commitment to articulating questions about human behavior and psychology, and articulating answers to those questions, with conceptual and theoretical tools drawn from evolutionary theory.

In his inaugural lecture at Cambridge as Regius Professor of Modern History in 1895, Lord John Acton urged that the historian deliver moral judgments on the figures of his research. Acton declaimed: “I exhort you never to debase the moral currency or to lower the standard of rectitude, but to try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong.” (Acton 1906, 234) / In 1902, the year after Acton died, the president of the American Historical Association, Henry Lea, in dubious celebration of his British colleague, responded to the exordium with a contrary claim about the historian's obligation, namely, objectively to render the facts of history without subjective moralizing. Referring to Acton's lecture, Lea declared: “I must confess that to me all this seems to be based on false premises and to lead to unfortunate conclusions as to the objects and purposes of history, however much it may serve to give point and piquancy to a narrative, to stimulate the interests of the causal reader by heightening lights and deepening shadows, and to subserve the purpose of propagating the opinions of the writer.” (Lea 1904, 234)

Classroom lecturing is a relatively easy task because there are usually several chances to get things right and perhaps more importantly because the audience is very much dependent on the lecturer. Non-academic lectures, especially business lectures and talks, tend to be bimodal. Some are filled with useless acronyms and facts, without any point or focus. Others have such a high threshold for success that even seasoned academic lecturers would find success elusive. In this chapter, we will take a closer look at some of the key issues and common mistakes that are made when presenting in business and professional settings.

THE BUSINESS PRESENTATION

Business presentations share many elements with a typical academic lecture, including the need for clarity, audience understanding, as well as maintaining control over the presentation. Business presentations, however, because of the dynamic and broad nature of the audience, require a more thorough background and have to be more to the point than a regular academic lecture. Furthermore, due to the fact that business presentations are often given to colleagues or bosses (versus lecturing to students who, even if they hate the lecture, must understand the contents in order to prepare for the exam), there are pressures present which would normally not exist in the academic world.

No matter how effective the lecturer or the lecture, nothing can replace the experience and knowledge gained when an audience member obtains first-hand knowledge through practical experiments and labs. This obviously applies to multi-lecture courses, but can even involve simple in-class experiments conducted during the lecture. No matter how and where these labs/experiments are conducted, they are a unique and essential tool in the teaching process. In this chapter we will take a closer look at how labs should be successfully organized, calibrated to the lecture, and evaluated.

THE POINT OF LABS AND PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE

The clarity and focus that has been repeated throughout this book for lecturers is equally important for labs. The point of labs is to take a somewhat complex concept or idea, simplify it in a way that can be touched and felt, and to allow the students to understand the basis for the idea through hands-on experience.

Occasionally, understanding comes from initial success. However, more often, true and deep understanding comes only after repeated failures. You can be told many times that an electronic device may act a certain way, and you can certainly learn a few things from setting up that circuit in the proper way. However, it is all the circuit forms that are non-functional and all the ways in which common mistakes could be made that will truly have an impact on what you will remember and what you understand.

There are times when even the most experienced lecturers get stuck, forget their line of thought, are unable to convey an important concept, or simply may start to lose their voice and get tired. Should these situations occur too often, the lecture becomes useless and the audience's view of the lecturer becomes very negative. For this reason, it is often useful to be aware of certain tricks as well as tools for audience regeneration.

In this chapter, we will go over a subset of these tricks/tools including confronting mistakes, lecture polls and surveys, non-defensive lecturing, as well as breaks, jokes, and other fun distractions. Used effectively by a novice lecturer, these tools and tricks can make the difference between a good lecture and a disaster. However, if these tools and tricks are used effectively by an experienced lecturer, they can make the lecture an unforgettable experience for the audience.

Effectively, in this chapter we assume that all that could be done regarding the lecture quality metric has been done. However, the lecturer quality and the audience quality metrics can be energized and increased by certain methods that will be explained in the following sections.

The start of a lecture is perhaps the most exciting and at the same time the most nerve racking moment of a lecture. This is when the audience's mentality is changing from a normal mode to a listening and paying attention mode. This is also when the lecturer is uncertain about the lecture, the questions that may arise, and the reaction of the audience.

At the same time, the initial few minutes of a lecture define the pace, extent of success, and the overall effect of a lecture. A bad start to a lecture makes the delivery of a successful lecture extremely difficult. On the other hand, a good and energetic start can make the delivery of a smooth lecture almost automatic. As a result, a great deal of care and attention is required by the lecturer in order to ensure that the lecture starts out in the right way. In this chapter, the dynamics and issues of the first few minutes of a lecture will be analyzed in detail.

THE INITIAL LACK OF ATTENTION

The first and most important aspect of the beginning of a lecture is the attention span of the audience. While generally the attention span of the audience decreases as the lecture goes on, in the first few minutes of a lecture the attention span actually increases from an initial low point, as shown in the following figure.

A very important and often neglected aspect of lectures is the way in which the lecture ends. Again, if we consider the television show analogy, the ending of most episodes is exciting, concluding, happy, and sometimes, involves a cliffhanger to motivate the viewers to watch further episodes. A lecture, in a very similar way, needs to end on a positive note while providing ample motivation for the audience to get excited about what they have just experienced. As a result, great care must be taken in the last few minutes of a lecture to end on a high note. For example, rushing to finish an example quickly due to the lack of time can have very negative consequences, as is the case when a topic causes confusion in the last moments of the lecture with no time to clarify the situation or to answer questions.

These issues will be explored in detail in the following sections.

DO NOT RUSH

The end of a lecture, unlike the beginning, needs to be a calm, relaxed and smooth event. It must finalize the topics of the lecture with a few moments to spare for further clarification. A very common mistake is to rush in these last moments due to an imperfectly executed lecture plan. However, what does rushing at the last moment really accomplish? Is reaching a lecture coverage goal worth the audience confusion that would result?

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.

There is a variety of guides, books, and theories related to giving effective presentations in professional settings. The recommendations regarding what constitutes an effective presentation are often similar. We will call presentations developed using these traditional recommendations as “classic” presentations.

Another approach that can be very effective, especially in today's age where the audiences are used to television show style emotional roller coasters and cliffhangers, is the “shock” style of presentation. These presentations have very little in common with classic presentations and are generally far more informal and to the point.

Finally, a presentation style that can generally work well in most settings is the hybrid presentation. The hybrid presentation is really a shock-style presentation disguised as a classic presentation. In essence, it maintains the effectiveness of the shock presentation while at the same time having a small amount of the professionalism and formality of classic presentations.

In the following sections, we will take a closer look at all three presentation methodologies in detail.

THE CLASSIC MODEL

The most generic and common style of presentations is that which we will refer to as classic. Classic presentations consist of well tested and well developed methods for conveying ideas during a presentation. There is a formal structure and an expected sequence of topics that need to be discussed. In the case in point below, we will examine the elements of the classic presentation in more detail.

The mindset of an individual is perhaps the most important attribute in determining that person's success. People with positive, optimistic, and ambitious mindsets tend to achieve more than those who are negative, overly pessimistic, or lack any kind of ambition. Perhaps the most important reason to have the right mindset is to overcome and defeat fear and failure, which can only be done by optimism and a positive, resilient, and determined attitude.

Having the right mindset is even more important for certain careers where quick reflexes and constant adaptability are required. And, just like anything else in life, the right mindset for any task can be acquired easily with enough practice and training. In this chapter, we will take a closer look at the mindset required for delivering successful lectures.

Case in point

Prior to the start of my lectures, I use a few minutes to walk through the audience while engaging in short but interesting discussions with them. The conversations generally consist of short greetings and questions about their daily activities. This action, aside from improving my relations with the audience, has a very positive effect on my mindset. First, it allows me to get more familiar with the students, thereby allowing me to use this familiarity to my advantage during the delivery of the lecture. Second, it sets my mindset into a talkative state from which giving a lecture comes quite naturally.

Advice from those with more knowledge and experience is always useful. This advice must be weighed against the fact that people and the world change, hence causing certain forms of advice to become outdated. In the case of lecturing, there are many online and printed public speaking and presenting guides that tell you the same things and give you the same lecturing pointers.

In this chapter, we will start by exploring some of the ways in which lecturing to today's internet generation audiences is different than in the past, hence causing certain classic lecturing suggestions and notions to be outdated. We will then focus on other lecturing concepts which are universally true for all audiences and all lecturing, presenting, and public speaking situations.

THE INTERNET GENERATION AUDIENCE

Fifty years ago, audiences would pack lecture rooms paying a substantial amount of attention to the speaker. Those audiences had not grown up with a television in their room, nor had they grown up with a permanent internet connection. The constant presence of television and the internet in the lives of today's youth has significantly modified the expectation that they have of a lecture.

The internet experience is almost entirely user controlled. If the user does not like a website, she/he can change the site or simply leave the computer. Furthermore, navigating through the internet is an interactive experience in that you choose when to scroll down, when to move forward on a page, and so on.

Imagine speaking to an audience of two hundred smart and highly critical individuals. If you fear them, the fear will prevent you from giving an effective lecture. If you analyze them in too much detail, then you risk confusing yourself. If you ignore them, then you will be no different than a mechanical video rerun. What you must do is to grab all two hundred audience members and bring them into your world and share with them your thoughts. You must exude confidence and remain in control of the lecture at all times. You must overcome your fear by focusing more on the audience than on yourself. Teaching, lecturing, public speaking, motivational talking, and presenting, which are all different names for exactly the same action, are an art form whose mastery can be surprisingly easy. In this book, numerous strategies, tips, and tricks will be presented that will help you with any lecturing task, including academic lectures and business presentations.

CONCLUSION

If you are interested in the fundamental ideas of this book, but do not want to spend the time and effort to read the entire book, then this section is for you. However, it is still recommended that you read this book, since much of the important details are lost in this short summarization.

Now that we have discussed in detail what you should do in a lecture, it is equally important to remind the reader of some bad habits that can often make a lecture a disaster. These significant errors in lecturing decisions are actually quite common. There is a tendency in all of us to either pack too much into the lecture or to go too quickly through a topic which the audience does not understand. In the following sections, we will look at these common mistakes, and come up with solutions as well as a list of DON'Ts.

OVERCONFIDENCE DISGUISED AS ARROGANCE

Confidence is a great thing, especially when it comes to giving lectures. The line between proper confidence and overconfidence, however, can sometimes be blurred. It is essential to keep in mind that overconfidence is often seen as arrogance, resulting in a strained audience–lecturer connection and lack of belief and interest in the lecture. This is especially the case, I have noticed, for successful (or not so successful) lecturers who are at the beginning or towards the middle of their careers.

It is useful to note that lecturing is in part similar to being a politician. The audience must be engaged and satisfied with the lecture or else they will not give you their attention, just as they would not give their vote to a politician.

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.