Not sure if it'll help, since I don't have any teaching experience, but coming at this from the perspective of a student, thinking of what your students might b

Not sure if it'll help, since I don't have any teaching experience, but coming at this from the perspective of a student, thinking of what your students might be thinking given what they're saying: First, "not dry" doesn't necessarily mean "not prepared" or "spontaneous". Consider things like the SR-71 story [1] or the unprotected VNC endpoints presentation [2]. Second, keep in mind what you can give students that they can't get from a textbook or another lecture that they find on youtube. The best professors I had weren't the ones that could quote the textbook; the best professors I had were the ones that could provide context for the textbook, or tell stories that illustrated important edge cases or institutional knowledge that isn't written in any textbook. There's a huge amount of wisdom that could never be "professional" enough to make it into a textbook but is nevertheless fantastic for helping a student understand or remember the material. For example, consider the "Things I Won't Work With" series; would never get past a textbook review committee, but absolutely riveting on top of the information transfer. Third, and finally, how these relate to helping students absorb knowledge. Consider spaced repetition and the method of loci [4] and what they mean about how the human brain forms knowledge: People remember networks of knowledge, not single facts. That's why I cite war stories above - giving students a story to wrap around an idea lets them link to it from multiple angles, each one reinforcing the memory or giving the brain a second or third chance to successfully record it. Interactive discussions are the same way; remembering a monologue is much harder than remembering the same information packaged as a socratic dialog with a few good jokes thrown in. That's why everyone else is recommending question-and-answer sessions and cold-calling; human memory is better at handling conversations than it is at speeches. [1] https://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-1079127041 https://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-10791270..., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg73GKm7GgI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg73GKm7GgI [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMtu7vV_HmY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMtu7vV_HmY [3] http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/thi... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci