The following rules were developed based on poor practices I observed while sitting through some pretty dismal technical lectures during my 11 years as a student in higher education. These 16 points guide the presentation of technical subjects in a manner that conveys the information clearly and provides the best context for the material to be understood and absorbed.

1. Always derive mathematical equations off the top of your head. If you copy verbatim from lecture notes, students cannot keep up.

2. Be rigorous when working examples. Carry out examples completely from start to finish, and don’t leave students with incomplete solutions.

3. Right what you say; do not say the correct thing and write the wrong thing. Students record the latter and forget the former.

4. Always define all variables you use. Students do not necessarily know what common variables represent, especially Greek symbols. Do not forget to indicate all vectors appropriately with a bar or arrow above the vector variable.

5. Never use a just-derived equation as a tool to solve an example problem. Students have not had adequate time to digest the equation to understand how you utilized it in your example.

6. Every time you write something new, step away from the board to give students time to copy what you wrote.

7. Always draw figures on the chalk board from the top to bottom and left to right to assure students have adequate paper space when copying the figure.

8. Never use the words “trivial”, “easy”, “obvious”, “straightforward”, etc. in descriptions or examples. Things are only trivial, easy, obvious, and straightforward after you understand them.

9. Never write things on the board before lecture begins. It takes time for students to copy what you wrote and they can’t pay attention to what you are saying while they copy.

10. Some derivations are not worth doing in class. If you really must have students understand a derivation, assign it as homework.

11. Never modify something already written on the board to make a new point; instead erase and start over. Trying to modify something you have already written to fit new conditions creates confusion.

12. Never introduce new material when there is a pending exam on old material. Before exams, students are not focused on learning new things; they want to master the older material for their exam.

13. As an instructor, never get angry when students do not understand. If they do not get it, it’s your fault, not theirs.

14. If you realize a majority of the students are lost, do not continue with the lecture. Stop, go back to where the students got lost, and start again.

15. Never attempt to draw an analogy to explain something by citing an example that not everyone is familiar with; (i.e. do not try to explain fluid circulation using an analogy to Maxwell’s equations for electromagnetic phenomenon unless the class has already studied Maxwell’s equations).

16. Never provide a general symbolic illustration as an example solution without solving a specific problem in parallel to demonstrate the method.