This is a live-streamed segment in which TJ Walker answers Amit (a Udemy user) about how to lecture on topics where the instructor lacks deep knowledge. Walker advises becoming an expert through rapid, focused reading (e.g., using Kindle Unlimited), and gives practical guidance for making lectures engaging and memorable—use stories, examples, visuals, movement, ask questions, and manage pacing with breaks every 60–90 minutes. He emphasizes that authoritative teaching requires deep study and active engagement rather than fact-dumps from behind a lectern.
Chapters
Amit has written in from Udemy, one of the online course provider platforms that I have my courses on, my online courses on and a few questions. Amit says my main goal is to be able to lecture and present something that I might not be perfectly knowledgeable in. And I mean, it's a fairly long letter. I want to dissect it one element at a time. I do want to caution you, it's really hard to give good lectures and presentations on stuff where you don't feel like you know more than almost anyone else. I mean, I think I'm good at speaking to people about the media and about giving presentations because I've been a lifelong student on it. I think about it, I study it, I've read almost every book. It's stuff I've been thinking about since the 1970s. To be just a generic teacher trainer on any subject, to read a manual and do it. I mean, obviously people do that, but it's hard to be really authoritative. My advice would be if you want to teach someone else, become an expert on it. Really dive into it. One great resource these days is on Amazon, they're Kindle Unlimited. For I think it's nine bucks a month, you can get almost a million books on the subject at no extra charge. So when you want to become an expert on something, just get the first 10. You can get 10 books at a time. Get the first 10 books on Kindle Unlimited and just read them as quickly as possible. Skim, see what similarity, and you can go through 100 books pretty quickly. That will give you real confidence. And I know I've done as many as 30 or 40 books on a subject in a weekend, not obviously reading every single word, but going through the important parts. So that's one way to become more knowledgeable. Your next state that you want students to attend and listen to lectures to despite it being a difficult topic or something out of their interest, you've got to make it interesting and relevant and memorable to them. You want to make the students feel the lectures are fun, entertaining and engaging and not just a fact dump. Well, that puts you way ahead of most lecturers because they do make their lectures fact dumps. And that's why just simply being straightforward and rational and logical, linear and in any presentation, whether it's the schoolroom or anyplace else, isn't particularly effective. So I'm glad to see you're trying to do that. You're trying to figure out how much to teach within a certain time frame, when to take breaks and what you can do to keep their interest and engage them. Well, if you're talking about an in person workshop, I try to go every 60 to 90 minutes to get people. I try to make it short enough time to run to the restroom. Now, with what I do with public speaking and media training, it's relatively easy because I have people standing up doing interviews and speeches every 10 minutes. So there's not the sense of them just sitting there for two hours at a time. But use your own judgment. You got to really look at people. Are they squirming? Do they seem uncomfortable? Are some people sneaking out of the back room? Those are all signs it's time for you to have a break. And you're saying you want to make sure when they leave the lecture they want to come back tomorrow. That's why you can't just phone it in. That's why you can't stand up at the blackboard or the whiteboard and write things in. You've got to focus on one idea at a time, make it memorable. Tell stories, examples, case studies, pictures, ask them questions, use your whole room, do all these things. And you can engage your audience in a much more effective way. And not to besmirch the teaching profession, but it's going to be pretty easy to skyrocket to the top. At least 5% of speakers if you follow these practices or of teachers if you follow these practices, because too many teachers just stand in one spot, stand behind a lectern, go through notes, and it's not engaging at all. Good luck.
