Learning From Classroom Video: What Makes it Compelling and What Makes it Hard

Abstract

Anecdotes of personal experience provide a vivid, compelling means of instruction and communication, something that effective communicators have known from at least the time of the parables of the New Testament. Newspaper stories commonly wrap stories of affected individuals around their presentations of scientific or medical reports (e.g., Kollers, 2000). Yet anecdotes can sometimes stand in the way of drawing larger, more general conclusions, something effective speakers have also commented on, as in this legislative testimony by Hirsch (1997): You can expect no amusing anecdotes. About thirty years ago, I had a similar opportunity to address an important policy-making body, when I was a department chairman, and I was invited to speak to the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia. A colleague looked over my prepared talk and gave me a wise piece of advice. He said, “Take out all the anecdotes; those will be the only things they will remember.”.