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Odradek's avatar

"In my lectures I often seek to gain favor with my audience through a somewhat comic turn; to entertain them so that they willingly hear me out. That is certainly something bad. I am often pained by the thought of how much the success or value of what I do depends on how I am disposed. More so than for a concert singer." (Wittgenstein, diary entry for 2 May 1930)

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John Quiggin's avatar

The entertainment aspect of lecturing is going to become more important now that high-stakes assessment has become almost useless as a spur to the students to work.

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John Quiggin's avatar

Because I changed schools at a crucial moment, I never learned the skill of taking notes in class. As a result, I got much more out of my lectures than my fellow-students who did. The exception was the honours maths class I took where others not only took notes, but went over them in the evening after class.

It's striking that note-taking is the norm in undergrad classes where the information is all in the textbook, but is barely done in any adult context. I now have an AI summariser for meetings, which is handy, but i still rely mostly on memory.

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