Preparation and End of Lectures in College Teaching

The end of lectures in College Teaching

This is part of a presentation at the Harvard teacher training seminar on 12. September 2006. See also the First lecture collection.

The original presentation included movie clips of lectures which ranged from examples produced in the film to actual lecture clips of calculus classes. The clips served as a discussion basis on "the last minutes of a classroom". On this page, I have only 5 sequence examples taken from actual movies.
The punch line of this presentation was: it is often emphasised that the start of a lecture or the first lecture in a course is important. It is true that the start is a crucial moment like in a race. But also, as in sports, the start alone does not make it. The finish is almost as important because the last lecture, the last minutes of a lecture are kept also in the memory. It can be as important as the beginning of the lecture. Since teacher evaluations are done at the end of the course, the firework at the beginning of the semester might have been forgotten and a mediocre last lecture, or a weak end of a lecture can much of the previous efforts.