Advice for lecturers on how to keep students’ attention

Lecturers who can inspire their students are arguably a bigger influence on a university’s popularity than the amount of data delivered in lectures. In the business world, top executives often work with a personal rhetorical consultant because billions can be riding on the success of a presentation or negotiation.

By contrast, new university lecturers are not taught rhetoric with a psychological dimension. Therefore, only a few can concentrate not only on the professional aspects of what they are teaching but also on their rhetorical message, and thus make their lectures truly effective. Recent research has shown that, 10 minutes after a lecture, nine out of 10 students cannot remember even the most important and valuable ideas.

So the department of pathology and experimental research at Semmelweis University has launched psychology-based rhetoric training for educators.

How to keep students’ attention?

More than five decades ago, Zoltán Szabolcs, one of the last Hungarian polyhistor surgeons, gave a lecture at the university on a rare surgical procedure he had performed. During the presentation he projected an image of a nude woman every five minutes. By disguising the situation as a coincidence, the doctor achieved his goal perfectly: to keep the audience alert.

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Modern attention research began in the 1960s and 1970s. The most common test to measure how long active attention can be sustained is the Mackworth clock test. It consists of a white background in which an indicator jumps once every second; occasionally, however, there are double jumps, which the test-taker is asked to indicate by pressing a button. In the 1970s, the active attention span was about 30 minutes; by the 1990s this had fallen to 18 minutes, and now it is only one minute.

The rhetorical development programme aims to raise awareness among teachers and researchers that the effectiveness of a lecture can no longer be imposed by the power of authority, but must be earned, together with the trust of the audience.

Developing presentation and storytelling skills

The first question to ask is this: does the lecturer have a strong message and a passionate desire to spread that message? If so, rhetorical, presentation and storytelling skills can be developed regardless of gender or personality. This is the philosophy of the rhetoric programme, with a focus on continuous practice and encouraging and stimulating feedback to develop natural talents. The programme was launched in 2018 and ran over three semesters, with 25 faculty members from the department of pathology participating. It consisted of situational and simulation exercises.

The results of the training can be captured in three main areas.

1. Unexpected shifts

Trainers participating in the programme learn to make their presentations as dynamic as possible, with changes every five minutes. In this way, they can reactivate attention and they also get the body of the listener to refocus. For example, the surprises that come with unexpected changes are reflected physically in the face. In their book Unmasking the Face, Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen describe what happens in such cases: the eyes widen, the mouth opens, the chin drops and the muscles relax – as if the body were trying to ensure that the mind can take in new information.

The three most important levels of shifts are: the linguistic-rhetorical level, when, for example, the speakers switch from data to storytelling; the technical-objective level, when, for example, they change from slides to blackboard; and the non-verbal level, when, for instance, they switch from speech to silence, taking a tactical pause in rhetorical terms.

The speakers should not use cheap or self-servingly provocative means to try to excite the audience from time to time. They should take care to ensure that the shifts are closely related to the message and that they fit in with the presentation as a whole.

2. Use your personal voice to build trust

Today, teachers are brave enough to show themselves not only as scientists but also as people; they share their personal commitment and their passion for the subject. This is the basis for building a relationship of trust with the audience, and trust is the main tool for making an impact. The research of social psychologist Amy Cuddy from Harvard University shows, among other things, that audiences judge trustworthiness first, and only when it is established do they then value competence.

3. Interactivity to help reduce stage fright

Participants in the rhetoric training understood that the fear of public speaking and stage fright are not unnatural reactions but are evolutionary responses that are part of human civilisation. In essence, when a speaker presents to an audience, they experience a primal sense of separation and exclusion from the group and fear being judged by the group members.

The best way to overcome this fear of performing is to imagine and implement the performance not as a monologue but as a conversation, where the driving force is not the desire to conform but the desire to give. It should also be made clear that this new way of speaking and performing can be achieved only with practice, because without planning, developing and practising the performance, the performer can only concentrate on themselves in a live situation, rather than on the audience.

The actor Anthony Hopkins once advised his acting students to memorise their texts so that they could forget them. During the rhetoric programme, the same is asked of each performer: “Learn your presentation so that you can forget it.” In other words, practise until you are one with the message you wish to transmit, because only then will you be relaxed, natural and confident in front of the audience.

Redefining the role of the lecturer

The lecturer who showed nude pictures to his students was hardly familiar with the Mackworth clock test, but decades ago he was already aware that the biggest challenge for instructors is to attract and reactivate attention. However, today the radically changed stimulus threshold means it takes more time and effort to open up the audience to science. In this process, moreover, both the left brain AND the right brain have to be engaged, using imagination and association skills. A redefinition of the role of the lecturer will be essential in the near future, to think of lecturing not as a compulsory task but as a force that shapes the scientific and professional worldview of medical practitioners.

Kinga Györffy is a lecturer of psychology-based rhetoric training and András Matolcsy is director, both at the first department of pathology and experimental cancer research at Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary.

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Kinga Györffy is the author of (published in Hungarian) Present Yourself: The Secrets of a Captivating Talk (Magnólia, 2019) and The Escape from the Story Phobia: Tell Me a Story and Convince Me (21. Század Kiadó, 2022).