This month, our committee members reflect on how they develop lectures from the start. When preparing to teach a course, instructors need to organize content, design slides, create class activities, and construct a lecture for each class session. In this post, members share how they approach developing a lecture from scratch, including strategies that have worked for them and strategies that have not worked for them.
Chair: Ashmita Mazumder (she/her), University of Toronto - Scarborough:
When I develop a lecture from scratch, I usually start by identifying the main learning goal for that class session. Before thinking about slides or activities, I ask myself: What should students understand, be able to explain, or apply by the end of this class? Once I have that goal in mind, I work backward to decide what content is essential, what examples will make the material clearer, and where students might need opportunities to pause and reflect.
From there, I try to organize the lecture around a clear structure rather than a list of topics. I find it helpful to break the session into a few major sections, each connected to a guiding question or key takeaway. Then I build slides that support the flow of the lecture, using them as visual anchors rather than a script. I also try to include short activities, discussion prompts, or application questions throughout the session so that students are not only listening but also actively engaging with the material.
One strategy that has worked well for me is planning moments of interaction before creating the final slide deck. This helps me avoid building a lecture that is too content-heavy. I have also found it useful to think about transitions between sections, because students often need help seeing how one idea connects to the next.
A strategy that has not worked as well is starting with the slides first. When I begin by making slides, I sometimes include too much information or lose sight of the main learning objective. Similarly, trying to cover every detail can make the lecture feel rushed. I have learned that a more focused lecture with time for reflection, examples, and student participation is usually more effective than one that tries to cover too much.
Associate Chair: Lindsey Rutter (she/her), Oregon State University:
When I develop lectures for the first time, I first map out what content will be covered across the entire term, and look through the APA’s Introductory Psychology Initiative Pillars to figure out the best way to map out content across the term. Once I know what chapters and content will be covered, I like to use the headers of course readings to guide the skeleton of my lectures. I am passionate about including contemporary research findings into my course materials, so I figure out where pockets exist in my lectures to introduce studies and research findings from modern psychological advancements. I try to be intentional in constructing my lectures into a flow that makes sense, and I like to imagine that I start with the most broad part of the chapter and slowly funnel into more specifics as the lecture goes on. However, sometimes students find that they are interested in a specific part of the course content that I wasn’t initially anticipating, requiring me to stay present and be adaptable if lectures deviate from the initial plan.
Mel Ceren (she/her), CUNY Graduate Center:
When I develop a lecture, I start by asking myself: What are the students genuinely interested in? From there, I focus on how we can connect those interests to real-world scenarios. It’s always inspiring to see students lean into their own experiences, shaping the lecture and discussions in ways that resonate deeply with them. I remember an undergraduate professor who structured assignments around take-home, open-ended questions tied to the lecture material. At first, I questioned the approach, it seemed like an easy way to earn an A. But the real lesson was what this professor emphasized: there’s no wrong answer when it comes to a student’s experience. Their lived experiences are valid because they’ve encountered challenges firsthand, and those experiences can and should inform their studies and their passion for learning. This is a principle I carry into my own lectures. I prioritize what’s relevant in today’s world, where everything is interconnected within their micro and meso systems. My goal is to help students see how they can apply what they learn in class to their daily lives.
Romeo Penheiro, University of Houston:
I start with backward design rather than slides when building a lecture from scratch. First, I ask what I want learners to understand or be able to do by the end of the session. Then, I design the worksheet, reflection, vignette, or assessment that would show me whether they reached that goal. Finally, I decide what content belongs in the lecture. For instance, in my Introduction to Neuropsychology course, this usually means organizing each class around a cognitive construct, its brain–behavior relationships, how it may be measured, what it looks like in clinical disorders, and how it affects everyday functioning. I have found that lectures work best when students can see the relevance of the topic quickly through applied examples, clinical vignettes, cultural context, and daily-life anchors. I aspire to build lectures that help learners get excited about neuropsychology while practicing how to think like budding clinicians and scientists.
Elizabeth Taylor (she/ her), Virginia Commonwealth University:
When developing lectures, I typically start with an outline of what I want students to take away. When teaching classes, I have also typically utilized a textbook. Thus, I may peruse the textbook and identify sections of the chapter that I would like to expand upon or complement in the lecture. At the beginning of the class, I always note that I will not cover everything in the textbook in my lectures, but that my lectures are designed to expand upon or complement topics mentioned in the textbook.
After I have decided on the topics that I intend to cover in the lecture and identified the gaps that the textbook chapter doesn’t cover, or that I would like to complement, I dig into the literature on these topics to elaborate upon the concepts. Additionally, I will typically find an article that covers an “emerging” related concept or something that I think students will find interesting in each lecture. For example, if designing a lecture on Cognitive Development in Adolescence, I might include a section at the end of the lecture talking about the impact of AI on adolescent cognitive development. Finally, I like to include a reflection or journal prompt to accompany each lecture, either at the beginning or in the middle of the lecture, to allow students time to breathe and connect with the topics that we are discussing. Oftentimes, the prompts will provide space for students to connect their personal experiences to the content, to bridge connections between the two. For example, when giving a lecture on the school and work contexts in adolescence, I provided the following prompt: “How do you think that the emergence and increasing popularity of AI has and will influence adolescents’ school and work experiences? How has AI influenced your experiences in school?”
When an instructor adopts a textbook, many publishers also have slides available to accompany the chapters in the textbook. I think that these slides can be useful as a starting point; however, I tend to use these less than I initially thought that I might, as I try to avoid covering all of the material in the textbook to maintain student engagement. If students feel that they can read everything that they would encounter in the lecture through the textbook chapter, they most likely will not have the same motivation to engage with class lectures.
Mackenzie Devaney, University of Minnesota- Twin Cities:
The first thing I do when preparing a lecture is to develop learning outcomes so I can narrow my focus on what I want students to take away from the specific lecture. Once I have my learning outcomes, I review the associated textbook chapter to begin creating an outline for the key concepts for what I really want to emphasize in the lecture as well. In my first semester teaching I relied too much on the textbooks for creating my lectures and received feedback that it was sometimes repetitive. Now I try to use the textbook as a guide but try to make lectures complement it. From the initial outline, I begin adding additional topics that I want to cover in the lecture. Additionally, I try to incorporate current issues and real-world applications within each lecture to help students get a better understanding of the field and how it can apply to their lives.
Based on my notes and outline, I begin to create my slides. I always make my slides colorful and fun as a way to make it entertaining for the students and myself. Depending on the topic being covered, I may have a theme for the lecture and I would use that for my slides and all my examples. For example, for an intergroup relations and group processes lecture I had a Mean Girls theme so I made my slides pink and had all of my examples be from Mean Girls. I find having a theme and integrating it throughout the slides and examples is really beneficial for student engagement as it can make topics more interesting.
For every lecture, I try to include discussion questions and at least one activity for the class to make my lectures more interactive. I try to have the discussion questions and activities throughout the lecture as a way to avoid having long sections of just lecturing. Often textbooks have associated materials so I tend to use those as a basis for my discussion questions, though other times I ask students to compare theories we talk about. For activities, I tend to try to do modified experiments within my courses or have students complete measures that we talk about like personality tests.
