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Call me a bitter undergrad, but everyone's about to get the pedagogy lecture. (We know I've jumped the shark because I said "pedagogy" with a straight face.)
First: if you are writing on a blackboard, stop talking.
Second: if it's important, put it on the blackboard. Like this: "important term: means this." Corollary: no tangent should be longer than two minutes.
Third: if you are drawing a graph, label your graph, just like freshmen are forced to do in 100-level classes: title, axes, units. If you draw multiple lines on the graph, label the lines.
Fourth: if you put up an equation, put up what the pieces mean. Telling me that No/(Nt - No) = e^-[nF*(psi-psi0)/RT] is only useful if I know what psi0 represents, and also that No is Nopen, not Nzero.
Fifth: if you can't do any of these things, and it's a 400-level class, find your sub-discipline's equivalent of Albert's all-encompassing Molecular Biology of the Cell. Tell your students about it. If it costs more than $150, put it on reserve at the library. You should do this anyway, but if you're hitting your marks in lecture, a good fallback textbook is gravy, rather than essential.
Bonus: powerpoint is like salt. A little is a good thing, but a lot will kill you. Dump it at the door with the rest of the trash.
Bonus #2: I have never seen anyone go wrong with colored chalk, except by forgetting to bring it.
( So perhaps I needed to let loose a bit. )
Good news: I wrote my rant! Bad news: I still don't understand voltage-gating in channels. Busted on the procrastination front.
First: if you are writing on a blackboard, stop talking.
Second: if it's important, put it on the blackboard. Like this: "important term: means this." Corollary: no tangent should be longer than two minutes.
Third: if you are drawing a graph, label your graph, just like freshmen are forced to do in 100-level classes: title, axes, units. If you draw multiple lines on the graph, label the lines.
Fourth: if you put up an equation, put up what the pieces mean. Telling me that No/(Nt - No) = e^-[nF*(psi-psi0)/RT] is only useful if I know what psi0 represents, and also that No is Nopen, not Nzero.
Fifth: if you can't do any of these things, and it's a 400-level class, find your sub-discipline's equivalent of Albert's all-encompassing Molecular Biology of the Cell. Tell your students about it. If it costs more than $150, put it on reserve at the library. You should do this anyway, but if you're hitting your marks in lecture, a good fallback textbook is gravy, rather than essential.
Bonus: powerpoint is like salt. A little is a good thing, but a lot will kill you. Dump it at the door with the rest of the trash.
Bonus #2: I have never seen anyone go wrong with colored chalk, except by forgetting to bring it.
( So perhaps I needed to let loose a bit. )
Good news: I wrote my rant! Bad news: I still don't understand voltage-gating in channels. Busted on the procrastination front.
