Some guest speakers deliver a lecture, while others want participation from the audience. A guest speaker may use teaching methods like asking audience members to help explain a time period, event or experiment from their knowledge. For example, if a guest speaker is a Vietnam veteran who is discussing his third novel, he may ask members of the group what they know about Vietnam and correct them where they have facts mixed up or an undeveloped idea of war. The teaching method works well because students trust the speaker as a real expert--a person who has first-hand experience.
After a speaker presents her topic or ideas, she can invite the audience to ask questions or make comments about her work. For example, if a entrepreneur businesswoman speaks to a group of young, aspiring business-owners, she will want to field questions so that she does not leave any information out. This question-and-answer session is not just a tack at the end of the speech. Audience members who ask questions--and the rest of the audience that hears the answer--learn from the teaching method. While some guest speakers may answer a query with a yes or no answer, others launch into a discussion, or lecture, on a point of interest not mentioned.
Using games and creative experiments to excite the audience, guest speakers teach with hands-on methods. A speaker from NASA, for example, may bring a space suit to the assembly. She may ask a student to try on a helmet to feel its weight. The astronaut, after she has delivered a few facts and told her space mission story, may ask students to break into groups and come with a dialogue they would have from the space station to Houston or another home-base. The talk can help students get excited about space exploration by seeing that it's possible. An art guest speaker may ask an audience member to come onstage to draw a portrait of him--the artist keeping his eyes closed. If the speaker is talking about acceptance in the art world, he may praise the drawing because of its bold lines and its abstract features to boost confidence in young artists who are self-conscious of their talents.
A guest speaker can teach through pictures, slide shows and objects to get listeners involved in and understand the reality of a situation. For example, a human rights speaker may show a group a slide show of images from a war-ravaged country the rest of the world knows little about. While the images should not be too graphic for a general audience, the speaker can startle people from comfortable positions and give them perspective. However, the presenter's slideshow or photographs should not exploit the people pictured or "use" them to teach a listener about peace. Instead the guest presenter speaks throughout the slide-show, explaining each situation or crime against humanity. A POW survivor may bring in objects used to torture him, and others, while imprisoned. Permitting the audience to see and later carefully touch the objects teaches the audience about a world it does not know.