The Art of Lecturing: A Practical Guide to Successful University Lectures and Business Presentations

by Parham Aarabi

This volume is a simple and clear guide to lecturing. It offers strategies for successful lectures in the academic and business communities. Told from a lecturing mindset, this book aims to combat fear and nervousness, while presenting successful tricks and tactics. Parham Aarabi discusses a wide array of practical ideas that may surprise and help even the most experienced public speakers. In addition, Aarabi provides a unique insight into lecturing for 21st century audiences based on his own lecturing experiences at the University of Toronto and Stanford University. Aarabi is the winner of the 2004 IEEE Mac Van Valkenburg Early Career Teaching Award for inspirational classroom instruction .

172 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Ryan Patrick]

Not bad, but not great either. The book is short and it feels like something is missing. Considering the author is a science/engineering guy, I might have expected more nuts and bolts, but really, the book is about the author's own experiences in lecturing. And his main message is just to get out there and gain experience—try new things (although he doesn't provide a lot of 'new things' to try), and adapt to overcome your failures. This book is probably aimed at people just beginning their lecturing career, so I may not be the target audience. If nothing else, the book has some good reminders about paying attention to the audience and grabbing their attention.

[Claire Tanner · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit out of date in the concept of lecturing (i.e. That ppt is not as suitable as chalk and board - we don't even have boards in my current uni!), and with the examples of questions posed to students in the warm-start (i.e. Saying "you look tired - rough night?" could get you into serious trouble). It also often referred to the reader with huge assumptions about their gender/sexual identity "have you ever liked a girl?" which is no longer acceptable.

But the sections on nervousness and voice during lecturing was still relevant.