Making a lecture memorable

The key elements of a lecture that promote retention and understanding of material have been extensively described, although both the understanding and use of these principles by lecturers is a significant time and resource investment. Lecturers in healthcare are a broad group of people, many of which have other commitments and may lack prior formal teaching experience.

This commentary describes an essential version of the cognitive theories of learning and presents an assimilated and reduced version of these theories in the form of the acronym 'MAKE' (make it memorable, add value, keep audience interest, entertain) to enable the more rapid development of memorable lectures and reduce the time required to improve them.

There is a fine line between a lecture that engages and inspires the audience and one that is unimaginative and poorly planned. All lecturers should be encouraged to use simple evidence-based methods to improve engagement, retention and student satisfaction. The easy to understand and share nature of the "MAKE" acronym could help achieve these aims.