- Bence Fabó, Budapest University of Technology and Economics
- Mihály Makovsky, Budapest University of Technology and Economics
- Gellért Csapodi, Budapest University of Technology and Economics
The aim of this part is to improve the idea of lecturing at schools. This is a very broad topic, so in our project, we are focusing on one particular, but very important problem: With a growing number of lecturers, how can the organisers ensure that new lecturers will also be able to deliver lectures of the same quality?
Finding good lecturers is difficult, but it's even more difficult to provide lectures of the same high quality while having more lecturers giving presentations about the same topic! Schools who apply for lectures are going to expect at least as good lectures as the previous ones, a lecture of poor quality could discourage them from taking part in the project.
We made a video explaining our proposed solution, which you can watch here:
The quality of the lecture mainly depends on two factors: the presenting style of the lecturer, and quality content.
For a good presenting style it is important:
- maintaining the interest of the audience
- speaking understandably, coherently, thoughtfuly and at the pace which fits the audience the most
- not shifting the topic, yet including interesting examples and personal experiences
- not going into foggy details, yet providing enough information while staying possible to follow
- colorful, eye-catching presentation with many pictures, videos, and necessary amount of text
As listed above, many presenting skills are required from all lecturers. To help them obtain these, we have created a list of guidelines. Furthermore, Hack Kosice could provide presentation templates for each topic. The template should include a draft about the presentation and standardized design. Lecturers could use this presentation template to prepare for their lectures, this way all lectures could be similar yet diverse, ensuring quality.
We would describe quality content as:
- providing enough information about the topic
- up-to-date, real-life based information
- interesting examples to illustrate topics
- pictures, videos, chart, graphs which help to understand the presentation better
We came up with the idea to create a webpage for the lecturers where they can share their experiences, class materials and feedback from students. Every topic could have a distinct part on the webpage where lecturers can upload their presentations, they can share their experiences and ideas how the certain topic could be taught better and everyone could see the feedback of the students about the certain topics. The best student projects, in-class experiences and tasks and picture/video materials would also be available for the lecturers.
On the webpage, at each topic folder, these materials would be available for the lecturers:
- student feedbacks about the previous lectures
- presentations of previous lectures
- best videos, images, and further materials which illustrate the topic
- the experiences of the lecturers who teach the certain topics
- in-class project ideas, homework ideas
If lecturers are preparing for their lectures, they could see all the materials, feedbacks and experiences of previous lectures well organized on a webpage.
This solution could have many positive effects, such as:
- good ideas/materials/presentations get preserved and are reused
- lecturers don't have to start preparing for the lectures from scratch
- if lecturers use roughly the same materials/projects, quality can be guaranteed and kept at a constantly high level
- student feedbacks and lecturer experiences are well used and easy to handle
To sum it up, such a webpage for the lecturers would guarantee quality content even if the lectures are held by different people. Eventhough the content of lectures would be rougly the same in all schools, personal creativeness could still be preserved.
Beside these ideas, we would also advice Hack Slovakia to employ some mentors, who could pay attention to lecturers (especially to the new ones). Mentors could help lecturers to apply the presentation guidelines, give ideas, tricks and tips to make presentaions better and they could monitor the lectures to see whether the quality is staying high enough, or whether it's improving or decreasing. They could help the lecturers to find their strengths and weeknesses, and based on them they could give advices, how to improve their skills and the quality of the presentation.
The more experienced members of the team could become mentors who are suitable for the job, so those who are capable of creating professional presentations (collecting materials, making slides, etc..), and get on well with collegues and newcomers.
We assume that this program would be beneficial for everyone.
To maintain or improve quality, we offer three main ideas. Presentation templates and guidelines could help lecturers to ensure high quality presenting style. A webpage for sharing experiences and materials about certain topics could improve lectures and help the best ideas to spread. Lecturer mentors would enable lecturers to get help by preparing for their lectures and mentors would monitor the whole project to see what's right and what's wrong.