Students come to your class for your version of the story of your topic, so you can use this to your advantage and tell anecdotes and stories (professional or relevant personal). Humor is a great way to break the ice, too, as well as inviting students to share their own stories.
We all love to hear about funny quirks and anything that helps us perceive a little bit of the personality of others. If you are someone who writes a special program for organizing your files on a brand-new mac or have a funny quirk, students love to hear about them. This way you can easily make your course more personal.
Micro Lectures: Spice up your micro lectures with an anecdote.
Courseware: You can use the free text block, the banner or audio blocks and the design of the pages and sections to share stories or experiences which relate to the presented material. This can give our whole courseware a new flavour, even if you do it only in a few instances.
MINI: You can use these tips quickly and with little effort in your current teaching.
Your own best judgement of what and when you want to share stories and experiences to motivate students or to liven up the conversation is probably the most accurate rule of thumb.
Prepare the session a day earlier:
- Is there a funny story or anecdote about this topic from a conference / from when you were a student/ an activity of students that you still remember, etc...?
- When was the topic relevant in the news?
- Which lecturers do you like and why? Is there something that you can adapt from them?
You might have one thing about you that is odd in a random way, like wearing funny ties, giving topic-unrelated riddles in class just to keep up the student's attention, or even a mascot that sits in your BBB conferences, virtually or in the room that you are calling from. You may even adopt a habit like always drink from the same personalized cup.
- Remember, being eccentric is ok!