What we'll talk about is understanding the principles of cognitive processing.
We'll think about how to structure a lecture for the maximum effect.
And also ways to engage a large audience.
And before we go further, I want to make sure that you have
the handout either to write on or to use electronically.
So, the first question is, why lecture at all?
Well as you probably already know, lecturing is efficient.
You can transfer a large amount of knowledge to a large group
of people, or hopefully just review
developments or highlight key issues of fact.
But I think mainly the reason why we all still lecture is because it maybe
what we have always done.
So let's talk for a minute about cognitive processing and what happens when someone
is sitting in a lecture and what do they need to do with the information.
So, first the input comes from a multitude of sensory systems.
It can come from visual systems.
It can come from auditory systems.
in other situations it may come from tactile sensory systems.
You get
the idea.
So once you got that input, either auditory
or visual in the case of a lecture.
The brain needs to process and identify the information.
So the processing that occurs involves whether or not this
object that you're trying to process is familiar or unfamiliar.
Have I heard this information before, or is this new information?
Is it like something I've recognized, or memorized before, and
where does it go? How do I categorize it?
And then once I have sense of, I know what it is, I know that it's new or unfamiliar,
I know what it needs to be or go with, then I can put it into storage or memory.
And so the three important pieces of cognitive
processing are to make sure that the information
has some sort of context, that it gets
coded appropriately And then it gets anchored with other
information that already exists in memory.