Student Presentations

Science classes often make little to no attempt to help students learn how to communicate the ideas they are learning. One way to try to incorporate communication into your class is by doing student presentations. Here are some examples...

Maria (Physical Science)

Students do presentations in groups of four throughout the semester (one every 4 weeks or so).
Presentations are based on chapters from the book Physics for Future Presidents.
Groups are required to make a poster, discuss the topic of the chapter, discuss places they disagree with the author’s opinions and engage the class in a discussion.
Formal presentation is about 20-30 mins then class discussion runs the rest of the 1 hr 45 min class.
Everyone in the group gets the same grade and grading errors on the side of being generous since grading is subjective.
Students are told on the 1st day of class about the presentations so they know what kind of class they are getting into.
Presentations are intended to teach the rest of the class big picture ideas. Questions from the presentations appear on the final exam.
Presentations are also coupled with discussions on Blackboard.
Student handouts are available on the Attachments page (link in the upper right)

Fung (Physical Science)

Students do presentations in groups of four the last two days of the semester (3 groups each day).
Presentations are based on month long projects students do outside of class.
Each presentation must involve a demonstration.
Presentations are just one of many parts of the assessment of the projects.
Presentations are intended to teach the rest of the class. Questions from the presentations appear on the final exam (students must answer 2 out of 6 questions related to presentations).
Students vote on the best presentation at the end and the group that wins gets a few extra points.

Bobby (Modern Physics)

Students do poster presentations in groups of 3 one day near the end of the semester.
Presentations are based on famous physics experiments.
Each poster is divided into theory, history/experiment and applications with one student in charge of each section.
Groups are assigned at the start of the semester however students adding/dropping after groups are decided is a headache because everything is designed around groups of 3.
Approximately 27 groups being overseen by 2 graduate TAs and a few undergraduate LAs.
Posters are setup throughout the building on judging day. 11ish professors throughout the department acted as judges.
Posters and presentations are intended to mimic poster sessions at conferences.
Overall project is difficult for students because this is their first experience trying to find scientific papers and probably their first experience presenting technical information in posters or verbally.
Student handouts are available in the Attachments page.

Alex (Physical Science)

Students do presentations in groups of 4 the last two days of the semester based projects that are done primarily in class (currently month long projects that students choose but originally two day projects that were designed by me)
Students pick specific roles (presentation manager, demo, visual aid, written report) and receive two grades - an individual grade based on their role and a group grade based on the overall presentation.
Presentations are mainly intended to be creative, interesting and not overly confusing. The presenting group is not trying to teach the rest of the class merely give them an idea of what the group did.
Presentations are one component of the overall assessment of the project.
Student handouts are available on the Attachments page.

Misc

Alex has also had individual students present short 5 minute presentations based on How Stuff Works articles or something similar. These were participation and everyone who did it received full credit.
Becky Thompson taught a lab where she used to have a group of two students present the prelab each week.
Students generally do not attend seminars regularly so they do not automatically know what should or should not go into a presentation. Providing students with examples and/or grading rubrics is essential.
Students’ primary experience with PowerPoint is thought lectures. If you do not help students plan their PowerPoint presentation they will put far too many words and too many details on the slides.
TAs can check out a projector from Eric Patkowski on the 5th floor.
If you want to video record the presentations you can check out a video camera from the Fine Arts library.
- The audience doesn’t get to view the presentation twice so anything that isn’t clear during the first viewing of the presentation probably should be considered unclear and should be counted off for.