How to give a great guest lecture

Guest lecturing is a powerful way to share your expertise, connect with students, and contribute to education — even if you're not a full-time professor. Whether you've been invited to speak in a university classroom, professional workshop, or online course, a great guest lecture goes beyond slides and information. It inspires, engages, and leaves students thinking differently.

So if you already figured out how to get your guest lecturing opportunity, here's a step-by-step guide on how to give a great guest lecture, even if it’s your first time.

1. Understand the Classroom Context

Before you plan your talk, learn everything you can about the setting:

• What course is this? What’s being covered, and where does your topic fit in?
• Who are the students? Undergraduates, graduate students, working professionals?
• What are the learning goals? Ask the professor what outcomes they’re aiming for.

This context helps you tailor your message so it feels relevant, not random. One of the biggest mistakes new guest lecturers make is assuming their personal story is enough — it has to connect to what students are already learning.

Ideally, you'll have done most of this work as you got the guest lecturing gig.

2. Build Learning Goals and an Outline

Don’t try to teach everything. Focus on a few core concepts that intersect with the learning journey of the students. Craft learning goals that you want your students to come away with.

A learning goal is clear, actionable, and student-centered. It’s not just what you want to say — it’s what you want students to know, feel, or be able to do after your lecture.

Good and bad example:

❌ “Talk about my startup journey.”

✅ “Help students understand how to identify early customer needs and validate a product idea.”

Good learning goals give your lecture structure and purpose. They help you choose what to include — and more importantly, what to leave out.

Next, create an outline of the key concepts and topics you want to show students. The outline should be brief - a few bullet points, but cover the main topics and agenda you want to discuss in the classroom. It might look like this:

0-10min: Introduction, introduce user research principles
10-30min: Classroom activity, split up into groups of five, to conduct user research with other students
30-45min: Student share-outs of what they learned
45-60min: Debrief, what worked and what didn't. Map back to principles
End: Q&A if time allows

Then, send the outline to the professor. Ask for feedback and confirmation that this outline maps to what you'd be hoping the students would get out of the class.

3. Flesh out your lecture with stories and engaging content

Students remember stories, not statistics. As you expand on your outline, include aspects of your journey, mistakes, insights, and turning points. Make it human.

Also: connect it back to their lives. Why does your topic matter to them? How could it shape their work, relationships, or thinking? How might this be applicable to their student life? To their future career? To their understanding of the world?

4. Make it Engaging

Nowadays, most students have a short attention span. This means, for better or worse, half of your job as a guest lecturer is to be engaging, to encourage students to pay attention to you. Here are some ideas on how to do this:

• Stories: Anchor your message in a real-world example.
• Slides: Use large, clear visuals or quotes — not dense bullet points.
• Interaction: Ask a provocative question, poll the room, or lead a short activity. Even a 1-minute reflection exercise builds engagement.
• Exercises: Split the students up into groups and have them do a case-style question or come up with ideas in response to a prompt.

People learn more when they participate, even briefly.

5. Get Ready

Now that you have fleshed out most of your lecture, it's time to prepare. This looks different for different audience members. Personally, I hate to rehearse or memorize because I like to do improvisational speaking. For others, it helps to do a run-through before you present. Here is a list of optional things you might want to consider:

• Rehearse your talk with a timer. Cut anything that doesn’t serve the core message.
• Consider Q&A Questions — this is often the richest part, and it might help to prepare ahead with some answers to common questions (e.g. "how did you get your job").
• Send it to a friend — sometimes, a friend can take a look at your lecture and identify what's working and what's not working better than you can.

Remember to get good sleep the night before so you can bring energy! Your presence — not just your words — is what students will remember.

6. Giving the lecture

It's time to give the lecture! Remember that lectures almost never go exactly as planned. Be prepared for things to go wrong, and for some questions to get no hands (while other questions get too many hands).

Smile, stay confident, and show your passion for the subject!

7. Follow Up and Reflect

After the lecture, it helps to do a few follow-ups to ensure you can keep getting more guest lecturing opportunities. Here are some must-dos:

• Thank the host or professor after the session.
• Offer to share slides or links with students.
• Ask for feedback if you’re hoping to do more guest lectures.

Take notes on what worked, what didn’t, and how the room responded — it’ll sharpen your next talk.

Bonus Tips

• Dress professionally, but match the culture of the industry you're representing. The students want to see what you look like as an example of what they might look like in your career.
• Adapt on the fly if students are more (or less) engaged than expected. Sometimes, you may need to cut slides if they aren't landing. When in doubt, just ask the classroom if they understand things.
• Be honest if you don’t know an answer — students respect authenticity, and you're not expected to know everything.

Conclusion

Giving a great guest lecture isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about connecting your expertise to their learning — with clarity, humility, and presence.

If you show up prepared, speak with purpose, and make space for interaction, your lecture won’t just be heard — it’ll be remembered.

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