Lecture Templates: Convenient Partial Lecture Delivery System

Abstract

This article reports on the use of a lecture delivery system that utilizes two forms of PowerPoint lecture presentations—a complete version used by the lecturer during classes and a corresponding partial version available in advance to the students in undergraduate and graduate chemistry courses. Pre-prepared lecture presentations allow for sharing of lecture materials among teaching faculty (e.g., to ensure consistency among several lecture sections in team taught courses) and an easy control of exactly how much of the lecture material students enrolled in the course are privy to prior to class time. Because, on average, 50% of the page space is left blank, the skill of taking notes is still practiced. The rather large initial time investment in creating and animating the lectures as well as developing the corresponding templates is compensated by easy subsequent editing and refining.