Guest lecturing, a common practice in higher education, involves inviting academics or professionals to contribute to the delivery of a course’s curriculum (Henderson, 2019, p. 115). Effective guest lectures enhance student learning by bringing specialized knowledge and practical insights into the classroom.
Graduate students can also serve as guest lecturers. This opportunity allows them to move beyond typical teaching assistant roles — such as grading, office hours, and tutorials — to gain valuable lecture-style teaching experience. If you are a graduate student exploring guest lecturing opportunities, this teaching tip offers you strategies for planning and delivering impactful and engaging guest lectures.
As a graduate student, how do I go about finding guest lecture opportunities?
In some cases, graduate students, especially those with significant experience as teaching assistants or expertise relevant to course content, are asked to offer guest lectures by their research supervisors or other faculty members with whom they worked as teaching assistants. However, you may also consider approaching faculty members in your department to ask what opportunities might be available to deliver guest lectures in their courses. You might also consider approaching colleagues, such as senior Ph.D. students in your department or postdoctoral scholars in a sessional instructor positions, and ask for guest lecturing opportunities.
I found an opportunity to teach. What should I consider before I start planning my guest lecture?
- Consider the opportunity of giving students a new experience. While you want to make sure your lecture fits within the context and teaching approach of the course, don’t be afraid to break from what students are used to in the class. Consider how your expertise and teaching style differs from the course instructor, and don’t be afraid to try something new.
- Consider how many lectures you’ll give. While most guest lecturers deliver a single, stand-alone lecture, others may deliver two (or occasionally more) lectures in the same course. The course schedule may also affect how long a single lecture will be, so consider how frequently and for how long the class meets each week.
- Attend lectures by the regular course instructor. By observing a lecture or two, you can get a sense of the teaching style that the students in the course are used to. Does the instructor use questions? Does the instructor augment lectures with activities? If student engagement is the norm in the lectures taught by the course instructor, you should plan some activities or at least some engaging questioning. Another reason to observe some lectures by the course instructor is that it allows you to think about what you might want to do differently when teaching your own lecture. Attending a lecture shortly before your own may also give you the opportunity to better contextualize your own content within the broader course.
- Consult with the course instructor when designing your lecture. The course instructor can help you better understand what your learners know and don’t know about the subject so that you can give a lecture appropriate to their level of knowledge. They can also help you understand how your lecture fits in the larger context of the course, so you can make sure you are providing the most valuable and relevant content. As a graduate-student guest lecturer, you’d also want to discuss with the course instructor how much autonomy you have in designing and delivering your lecture as this will determine how much agency you have over the content, materials, and teaching approach. Prior to your guest lecture, meet with the course instructor to discuss the lecture content and teaching approach. Some instructors are willing to share their lecture materials as a launching pad for creating a guest lecture while other instructors ask that graduate students doing guest lectures prepare their own materials.
- Reflect on the focus of your lecture and how it aligns with the course goals. Are you presenting on your own research, or on a specific subject already in the course syllabus? It’s important to think about what you want to present on, what your area of expertise is, what you have to offer, and how your lecture fits within the course. Reflect on how you can make your research topic useful for the students. For that, you may have to review the course outline/syllabus and fit your lecture within the course goals.
- Consider your relationship with the course instructor. There are different degrees of autonomy and power dynamics involved in facilitating a guest lecture as a graduate student. Are you facilitating a lecture for a class in which you’re a teaching assistant? Is the person you’re facilitating a lecture for your graduate supervisor? These factors may influence how you go about working with the course instructor on your guest lecture planning and delivery.
- Find out if your guest lecture will be part of course assignments or exam questions. If it will be, find out what parts of your lecture the course instructor will be assessing students on. When you have this information, you can make sure to emphasize content that will be especially important for students to retain. You can also use your guest lecture as an opportunity to practice writing midterm/exam questions, especially if you are a TA for the course. During the planning meeting, ask the course instructor if they would like you to write a few exam questions based on your lesson.
How should I plan my guest lecture?
- Know your audience. When planning your lecture, make sure you are aware of basic information about the class, such as the number of students enrolled (and the number who typically attend), and the course level. You should also ensure that you know what modality you will be teaching in (in person, online, or hybrid). Then, focus on tailoring content to your learners. What is their level of knowledge about the subject area? What information would be most useful for them? What would they find most engaging? Focusing on the students and what their needs are is an essential part of any type of lecture. If you are guest lecturing for a class you don’t TA (or if students may not know you), consider including a short introduction of yourself and your background in relation to the topic. This strategy helps to establish your credibility early on and get students interested. If you are able to, assess students’ career aspirations. This can help you highlight the value behind learning the topic you’re teaching on, by linking it to practical applications.
- Reflect on your own memorable lecture experiences. Consider what made lectures you have attended memorable. Are there elements of the design or delivery of those lectures that you can use in your own lecture? There are important learning principles related to attention, memory, and motivation that inform the design and delivery of lectures. For this reason, you’ll need to consider how to best structure and deliver your material to maintain student attention and scaffold learning for understanding and recall. One strategy you can use is to help students make connections between prior knowledge and new material.
- Develop 1-3 key learning outcomes for your lecture. Think about what you want the students to know, do, and value after your guest lecture. Use that as a starting point for your guest lecture planning. Try to align the learning outcomes for your lecture with the course learning outcomes if they are laid out in the syllabus/course outline. For more, see Writing Intended Learning Outcomes. You will also want to think about ways to assess at the end of your lecture if students have achieved these outcomes, for example by asking a few short practice questions.
- Build upon your teaching strengths. As a novice instructor, take the time to reflect on what you are good at (e.g., explaining things, asking interesting questions, sense of humor, etc.) and build on those strengths.
I’ve figured out how to approach my lecture. How do I put it all together?
- Develop and use a lesson plan/class outline. As a novice instructor, you’ll feel more prepared and confident if you create a lesson plan for your guest lecture. A lesson plan is a roadmap for the class that lays out what you want to teach and how you will teach it. It includes what you and students will be doing during the class. A good lesson plan will help you prioritize what’s essential for students to learn and help you anticipate students’ questions. Since time management is one of the most challenging aspects of classroom planning, a lesson plan can help you manage the time better. To help you prepare your guest lecture, consider suggestions and templates from the Planning a Lesson tip sheet.
- Design your lecture as a series of mini-lectures, augmented by questions and brief activities. Since the average attention span is 15-20 minutes, student attention levels stay higher if instructors periodically break up the flow of the lecture. If you are planning a 50-minute or 90-minute guest lecture, split your lecture into several mini-lectures of 10-15 minutes each, use mini-summaries to connect various aspects of the lecture, and augment lecture content with some form of active-learning activities (e.g., questions using polling tools; demonstrations; case studies; videos with questions). For active-learning ideas, consult the following tip sheets: Active Learning Activities, Nine Alternatives to Lecturing, Question Strategies.
- Consider how you will engage students. Think about how you will guide and direct student attention to important points in the lecture. Highlighting the important points will capture their attention during the lecture and, if they take good notes, will help them when it comes to studying for the exam. It is also useful to build in periodic check-ins with students to spot what needs clarification. You can do it by using questions such as, “What can I unpack in more detail for you?” or “What can I clarify?” This strategy helps to make sure your plan hasn’t outpaced your learners’ capacity to keep up. You also might want to incorporate short questions about the material you have covered to ensure students are following along. The key is that you yourself don’t talk yourself for more than about 15 miutes without reengaging the students so that you don’t lose their attention. It’s also helpful to encourage lots of questions so students can feel engaged and make the most of what you have to offer. To learn more about using questions as learning tools, consult the Question Strategies teaching tip.
What teaching strategies can I use during my lecture to make it more engaging and student-focused?
- Check for student understanding throughout your lecture. Comprehension checks are a great way to ensure your learners are following along and understand what you’re saying. Include a mini-summary after different sections of your lecture, and make sure to stop and ask students what you can clarify as you go along. Also leave time for students to ask you any questions they may have. To enhance your questioning strategies, see the teaching tip Asking Questions: Six Types.
- Speak clearly and don’t rush through the material. Make sure you speak at an appropriate volume for the classroom so that everyone can hear you. At the start of the class, check in with students to make sure that they can hear you. If your voice is on the quiet side, use a microphone. If you tend to speak fast, especially when nervous, try to slow down and avoid filler words such as ‘um’ and ‘uh’ that can be distracting to students.
- Move around the classroom. While this may not be possible in all classrooms, it’s helpful to move away from the podium and move freely around the classroom. This can help keep students engaged and can bring a sense of life and energy to your lecture. This is particularly important in larger lecture spaces.
- Design effective slides. If you plan to teach with slides, follow the best practice for teaching with PowerPoint which is not having too many (or too few) slides. Make use of visual aids without over-stimulating students, and not overwhelming students with dense text on your slides. Think about instructors you’ve had in the past that had effective slides and try to mirror those. It may also be helpful to have someone, such as the instructor or a peer, look over your slides ahead of time. Another important aspect is to make sure you create slides that meet accessibility standards. To help you with this task, consult Accessibility Checklist for MS PowerPoint and Best Practices for PowerPoint.
- Help students gain better insight into potential career paths. If you’re presenting on your own research, there may be opportunities to highlight career paths in a field related to the work you do. Since many students don’t know for sure which career path they want to pursue, making them more aware of the different options available related to their field of study can be helpful. You can also highlight your experience as a graduate student and help make students aware of academia as a potential path.
- Assess what they’ve learned. Brief post-assessments are a great way to see if you were successful in achieving the learning outcomes you set for the lecture. At the end of the lecture, check what students have learned through short quizzes, reflections, discussion, and other types of brief formative assessment.
Now that my lecture is ready, how should I prepare to teach it to students?
- Practice your guest lecture ahead of time. Practicing your guest lecture allows you to work through any issues such as the clarity of your explanations (especially of difficult and complex ideas and concepts), timing, transitions, and making sure your lecture is structured well. You will be able to gauge how much material you could realistically cover – a difficult component of lecture planning. Practice will also increase your teaching confidence. If your lesson is long (i.e., 90 minutes or more), practice the first 10 minutes so that you build up confidence and for the remaining time, rely on the lesson plan and your expertise.
- Be flexible and embrace uncertainty. Nothing ever goes fully according to plan. Be ready to make adjustments in case your lecture goes too quickly or slowly (for example have a few discussion questions ready or a few slides you could cut), technical difficulties arise (think of ways to ask questions in person if you were going to have an online poll), or certain parts of your lecture not connecting with learners as much as others.
- Consider what you will need on the day(s) of your lecture(s). Make sure that you bring lots of water and any additional snacks or medications that you may need, depending on the duration of the lecture. Also consider wearing something comfortable and appropriate for the situation so that you are not distracted while teaching.
I finished my lecture! How do I know if it was successful?
- Take a few minutes to reflect on your lecture: At the end of your guest lecture, reflect on how it went compared with the lesson plan that you prepared. Take a few minutes to jot down your thoughts on the following questions:
- What went particularly well?
- What could have gone better and why?
- What questions did the students ask?
- What was your impression of how students responded to the lecture?
- How successful do you feel the class was at accomplishing the goals you had set for it?
- Ask the course instructor for their feedback: If the course instructor is present in class during your guest lecture, ask them if they’d be willing to provide feedback on your guest lecture. For example, you can ask for their feedback on lecture aspects such as organization and structure; student engagement and interaction; your time management in the class and your handling of the content and activities.
- Invite students to provide feedback on your guest lecture (with prior approval from the course instructor): Feedback from learners is a great way to develop your teaching skills.If the course instructoragrees,you could ask the students to provide anonymous, brief feedback on your lecture at the end of the class using institutionally supported polling tools such as Qualtrics or Vevox. Keep your feedback survey brief and use 2-3 questions, such as, “What worked well in this lecture?” and “What could be improved about this lecture to better support your learning?” Keep the feedback you receive along with your reflections and any materials you developed. These materials can be useful evidence of your teaching growth when preparing job applications for teaching-focused positions.
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Support
If you would like support applying these tips to your guest lecture, CTE staff members are here to help.
Please contact the CTE Grad Team.
References
Badia, G. (2015). Listen up, everyone! Conquering students' inattentiveness when you're the guest lecturer. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, (80). https://doi.org/10.29173/istl1650.
Henderson, E. F. (2019). The (un) invited guest? Feminist pedagogy and guest lecturing. Teaching in Higher Education, 24(1), 115-120.
Li, L., & Guo, R. (2015). A student-centered guest lecturing: A constructivism approach to promote student engagement. Journal of Instructional Pedagogies, 15, 1-7.
Merle, P. F., & Craig, C. (2017). Be my guest: A survey of mass communication students' perception of guest speakers. College Teaching, 65(2), 41-49.
Zheng, S. L., Chen, Y. S., Wang, X., Hoffmann, C., & Volkov, A. (2018). From the source: student-centred guest lecturing in a chemical crystallography class. Journal of Applied Crystallography, 51(3), 909-914.