Do you have challenges getting your message across? Do you sometimes feel like what you say is not heard or understood? A little time spent on honing your communication skills can have huge payoffs in learner satisfaction. When we focus only on the ‘spaghetti' (the content) and not the ‘sauce' (motivation) we lose a great opportunity to engage and excite learners about our chosen field. This interactive session will include lots of ‘tips and tricks' for communicating clearly and heightening learner satisfaction in the classroom setting.

1. Presentation and Communication in a
Learner-Centered Classroom
Session Leader: Dr. Rosalind Warner, College Professor
Political Science, Okanagan College

5. Content of the
message…
Form of the
message…

6. Form = Effectiveness
• Speech patterns
• Imagery
• Gestures
Content = Effectiveness
• Comparisons
• Concrete Examples
• Iceberg
• Mystery Box

7. Shorter,
varied
sentences
Pauses &
emphasis
Repetition
& use of
three

10. • 7 ounces finely chopped
bittersweet or semisweet
chocolate
• 4 tablespoons unsalted
butter
• 1 1/2 teaspoons pure
vanilla extract

12. “Gestures and body
orientations constitute
important resources
for establishing coherence
during lectures.”

13. Types of Gestures:
Beats (or batons)
Pointing
Iconic
Metaphorical
A Picture is NOT Worth
a Thousand Words!

14. Content of the
message…
Form of the
message…

15. “I‟ll be floating like a
butterfly and stinging
like a bee.” –
~Muhammed Ali
“Government is like a
baby. An alimentary
canal with a big
appetite at one end and
no sense of
responsibility at the
other.”
~Ronald Reagan
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on
the shoulders of giants.”
~Isaac Newton

16. Democracies Have:
• Pluralism
• The rule of law
• Accountability
Non-Democracies have:
• No pluralism
• No rule of law
• No accountability

17. “Those who cast the votes decide
nothing, those who count the
votes decide everything.”
~Joseph Stalin
“That‟s one small step for man, one giant
leap for mankind.” ~Neil Armstrong
“It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
~The Bible

19. Terminology
Concept &
Application
Critical &
Higher
Order
Thinking
What is the
meaning of
spaghetti?

21. What is known,
familiar, commonplace,
or ordinary
What is unknown, strange,
uncommon or extraordinary

22. I am Italian
I like to be boiled, but not
always
I can be fresh or dried
I am long and stringy
„Essential
Mysteries‟
General: Why are
people violent?
Specific: Why did
Germany invade Russia
in 1941? Why didn‟t
they learn from history?
What‟s for
Dinner?

23. • My Evolution as a Teacher/Learner
• How I see „Lecturing‟

24. Rosalind Warner
rowarner@okanagan.bc.ca
Okanagan College Institute for Learning
and Teaching:
http://ilt.okanagan.bc.ca/
Blog: http://rozwarner.wordpress.com/

25. • List three things that you saw me do or say in this
presentation that improved the communication
• Write the most complex/long winded or difficult
sentence you can think of from your discipline…
• Now simplify it as much as you can
• Convert the following bullet list into a narrative or
sequence
• Make comparative sentences from each the following
• Develop a question that might be a basis for an entire
lecture in your discipline
“The lure of
imaginary totality is
momentarily frozen
before the dialectic
of desire hastens on
within symbolic
chains.”
Making Monstrous: Frankenstein,
Criticism, Theory, by Fred Botting
(Manchester University Press, 1991)