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Contact: Sasha Steinberg

STARKVILLE, Miss.—During his first formal lecture as a John Grisham Master Teacher on Thursday [Oct. 19], Mississippi State Associate Professor of History Jim Giesen said an active learning environment depends on well-trained lecturers who engage students through their senses.

“We’re all familiar with what makes a lecture bad—information overload; a boring, one-sided delivery; the tendency in big classes to think of students as big vessels into which information is poured; or worse, data,” Giesen said. “But I argue these characteristics are actually about the person giving it and not the format itself.”

Giesen, who has taught for 12 years in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of History, said lecturers can make the higher education learning experience meaningful for students by embracing the social atmosphere that permeates a classroom, especially one large in size.

Giesen said he arrives early to welcome students and engage in discussion with them upon entering the classroom. At the beginning of class, he plays music from the time period on which the lecture is based, so students can think about how the music relates to the historical materials they’ve read.

“I want to get to know them,” Giesen said of his pre-class interaction with students. “It’s a big class, but I want to break it down and allow them to ask questions and get to know me as more than just a person on the stage.”

Engaging students through their brain, eyes and ears also is key to effective classroom instruction, Giesen said.

“I like to explain to my students why they should be active listeners by giving them the stakes of the history itself,” he said. “You must engage the ‘so what’ question and relate the subject of the lecture to the students’ lives and the times we’re living in. Providing goals and objectives gives them a sense of what we’re doing and the question we’re trying to answer by the end of the lecture.”

To engage students on a visual level, Giesen uses historical images and adds short, small amounts of text with help from the Keynote presentation software program.

“By having words pop up after I’ve introduced the topic, students are following me, not the text,” he said. “I tend to write very short snippets they can get right away and use effects to draw them in or make a final point before I advance the slide.”

Giesen said he also uses a “call and response” method to bring history to life, and it’s an approach that students seem to enjoy.

“If there’s a theme I introduce that I want students to remember over the next few lectures, I will refer to a physical space in the room,” he said. “For example, at the end of a World War II lecture, I introduce the Cold War. I say ‘Now we’re going to talk about the Vietnam War, Civil Rights Movement, and the women’s movement, but hanging over our heads is the Cold War.' I will point to the ceiling and tell my students ‘Look up. That’s the Cold War hanging over our heads,’ so later on in class, I just point to the ceiling (to reinforce that concept). My students will say at once ‘The Cold War!’ Having that sense of ‘we’re all in this together’ is another way to keep their attention.”

At the end of his presentation, Giesen noted that lecturing effectively is no easy task, but one that can be accomplished with proper training.

“As an institution, as a profession, as higher ed faculty, I think we have to pay more attention to how we prepare our graduate students to teach by focusing on the nuts and bolts, like how to grade, control a class and write a test,” he said. “We also need to consider the pros and cons of presenting information in the form of a lecture and include the discussion of teaching in our regular graduate classes and seminars. If the main problem with lectures is the lecturer, we need to take seriously the training of them.”

Now in its 25th year, the Grisham Master Teacher Award is a tribute to classroom instruction excellence that is named for the �������Ƶ accounting alumnus and internationally recognized author who provided funds to endow the award. Joining Giesen as a recipient of this year’s prestigious honor is Robert Banik, an 11-year instructor in the College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Mathematics and Statistics.

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