Effective lecturing : what dimensions are important?

This study investigated the dimensions of effective lecturing by exploring students' evaluations of teaching effectiveness derived from lecture courses across 35 departments at an urban university. From exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis procedures, two underlying dimensions were revealed. The dimensions appeared analogous to Joseph Lowman's proposed two-dimensional model of mastery teaching and therefore the dimensions were labeled: Intellectual Excitement and Interpersonal Rapport. Afterwards, a path analysis was utilized in order to investigate the relationship of the dimensions with a global rating item of instructor effectiveness. The results indicated that the dimension of Interpersonal Rapport accounted for 81% of the variance for overall instructor (lecturer) effectiveness.