The props for all my lecture and tutorial sessions are shown below:

• The USB drive holds my PowerPoint slides (if used), and I take a hard copy of them along for reference. These slides are available on the course webpage one day in advance of the class, so that students can print them out and bring them to the session to annotate if they wish.
• I take a set of different coloured pens for overhead transparencies, and, importantly, several blank transparencies. I also take any other pre-printed transparencies I intend to show and annotate during the session.
• I tend to hold the pointer the whole time, even when not using it to point to the screen – it absorbs any excess nervous energy!

My teaching environment requires both PowerPoint projection facilities and an overhead projector that all students can see. (It is surprising how many newly refurbished lecture theatres assume that only one or the other will be used.)

While the session is mainly led by the PowerPoint slides, the blank transparencies allow for spontaneity. I will frequently use them to illustrate a concept with an additional example or to provide extra supporting diagrams. Any pre-printed transparencies I use are copies of the PowerPoint slides; I annotate them (sometimes with suggestions from of the students themselves) during the session so as to highlight important issues.

An overhead projector and transparencies are therefore much more important to my delivery than computer projection faculties. Indeed, there have been several occasions when the technology has failed and I have had to do the whole lecture session spontaneously on plastic.

Class Participation

In both tutorials and lectures, I often ask individual students to write their own solutions to tutorial or in-class problems on an overhead slide so that it can be discussed with the whole class – this is a useful technique, as I have found students are more willing to comment publically on their peer’s solutions than on mine. This is a particularly useful exercise if the student’s solution is incorrect, because the other students see real errors they themselves might easily have made (not artificial ‘planted’ errors!) It is also useful to get three or four students to provide their solutions to the same problem, so that a comparison can be made.

An example of a brief in-class design exercise (drawing the screen associated with a given state in a state-transition dialogue network) was provided by a student on a transparency as shown below:

This method works best with a relaxed and informal (yet still focussed) atmosphere, and it is easier to persuade the students to take part if I am friendly and have made the effort to know them by name.

Such public airing of students’ solutions needs to be treated sensitively, and a supportive and friendly environment helps with this; it requires tact and the public expression of thanks and praise. I find that after a few lectures, students become used to this technique and are willing to engage with it, despite the fact it is different from anything else that they have experienced. My lectures have been described by students as “energetic”, “too fast”, “enthusiastic”, “like a steam train” – getting students involved ensures that I have to slow down.