A Brilliant Technique to Get Students to Pay Attention

[judith_s]

This is basically link spam, but I thought it was something I want to remember as a rhetorical device: http://pjammer.livejournal.com/172181.html

Anyone think this would work well for a presentation instead of a series of lectures?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I like it!

[kennita.livejournal.com]

That professor was brilliant! As far as using it for a presentation, I don't think it would work quite as well. The professor had a book full of presumably-true material to work with, that the students could take as fact; for a presentation, I assume there wouldn't be such a baseline for the attendees. Also, depending on the length and subject matter and importance of the presentation, focus might not be as much of an issue, since I think people can generally pay attention for an hour. That said, it might help in some cases.

Since there probably wouldn't be a test at the end, it might be fun to offer a piece of swag or other prize to whomever first points out the lie. Unless the presentation is *very* cut-and-dried, a lot of presentation time could be taken up with people claiming that things were lies that weren't. And if the lie wasn't caught, people might take time arguing that it was in fact true. Have citations out the wazoo -- maybe put them all on a sheet of paper. And may all powers help you if you include a matter of opinion.

One way to keep people from tuning out as soon as the lie is told would be to tell them that there are three lies. There would actually be two. The first will be that there are three, and the second would be the lie in the body of the presentation. When the first is told and (presumably) someone raises a hand and gets a prize, people will be listening very hard for another. At the end, you can ask how many lies there were, and give another prize to anyone who can tell how many and/or what the other one was.

It's worth a try, anyhow!