Keeping their attention

Today I gave a guest lecture to an introductory oceanography class. It's part science, part slide show, and all about the kind of research I do. I try to include a lot of photographs and descriptions of the process of how we do science, because I think that part is both interesting and appropriate. Basically, it's a lecture version of the topics I write about in this blog, merged with some elements of the shorter professional talks.

There were 200 students in the room, and I talked for 80 minutes. These are freshmen, mostly non-majors, and some might never take another science class again. How to keep their attention? As I talked, I felt myself getting more engaged in the material, more animated, starting to be more dramatic in my presentation.

Most students were zoned out, staring into space, texting on their phones. A few in the corner talked all the way through my presentation, and I had to force myself to ignore their rude behavior. Only a few students seemed totally engaged, and two of them came up to me at the end and asked questions. None of this is new. Every class I've ever taught has this approximate distribution of "students who care" versus "students who are there because they have to be" (except that nobody has to be in college). It makes me sad, though, that I can do such interesting things and present such interesting problems, hopefully in an engaging way, and people are still totally tuned out.