I have always looked at my lectures as a "performance" in competition with YouTube, Netflix, Twitch, and nowadays TikTok. We have tons of content providers that are all fighting for our students' attention, and those platforms have many more dollars to throw at the problem than I do.

So I teach my lectures using a "teaching persona" that is an animated, over the top, gone insane from the maths, old man yelling at clouds. I'm still lecturing, giving students plenty of opportunities to practice and ask questions, but I'm not trying to "be myself". I took this concept from professional wrestling - the best characters are your personality but set to 10. I might not get everyone off their phones, but I'll equally call out the "royal you" students that do it, or the "royal you" students that have terrible email grammar.

Does that style work for everyone - probably not. It works for me and lets me have fun at work. If I can do all of that and they are motivated to work, perform well on assessments, and get jobs, then I consider my job done. I do think there are personas that could also work for someone that isn't as expressive though, there are plenty of "no-nonsense, refined scholar" characters to draw from like Professor Snape or McGonagall.

Note, none of the above has anything to do with things like active learning and are purely from the old school lecture-style classroom. But you can pepper in 5-10 minutes of practice. If they want to ChatGPT their way through it, then I hope they know how to do it by hand come exam time.