Tag: presentations

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Tinkering

When I was a doctoral student, I once spent several weeks teaching Asian history to teenagers at Barrack Obama’s former high school. I vowed never again to put myself in the position of having to prep for class at 1:00 a.m. five nights a week. This is why I’m already tinkering with syllabi for the courses I’ll be teaching in the spring.

In comparative politics, I’m going to repeat my experiment with modular architecture, but I’ve removed the globalization theme — the topic has morphed into an entirely separate course, and conveniently I’ll be able to some of the material I put together last year.

I’m also going to continue using rocket pitch competitions, but with individual rather than group presentations. I’ve noticed that teams of students haven’t figured out how to productively generate a presentation — they tend to share tasks equally across all members of the team, rather than delegate and let people utilize their strengths. The end result is four students standing in the front of the room alternately talking (this is despite my use of Shark Tank as an example of what not to do).

Based on my colleague’s recommendation, part of the final grade will be based on the student’s quality of failure. Here is the syllabus language I’m using, based on what was published in the original Inside Higher Ed column:

This course requires realizing that progress requires curiosity, risk-taking, and failure. Making a mistake leads to the question “Why was that wrong?” and by answering this question, we are better able to develop new insights and eventually succeed. You’ll need to fail regularly to do well in this course because part of your final grade is based on your “quality of failure.” At the end of the semester, you’ll need to write a 2-3 page double-spaced essay analyzing your failures, why they occurred, and what you have learned from them. Your essay must conclude with an assessment of the learning you have gained through your mistakes in the course (a grade that ranges from 0 – meaning “I never failed” or “I learned nothing from failing” to 10 – meaning “I learned in new and creative ways from my failures”).

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Rocket Pitch

I’ve decided to use an exercise that I witnessed at the NEGMA conference on innovation — the rocket pitch. At the conference, competitors for venture capital had three minutes each to sell their ideas to the audience, who voted for their favorites using play Monopoly money.

I’m going to try this in my comparative politics course. Students have already given three group presentations in class. They’ve gone fairly well but sometimes their content has been fairly similar and I can sense students losing interest. For the remaining three presentations required of each group, there will be an element of competition. On days that presentations are scheduled, each student will be given a $10, a $20, and a $50 bill. Each group will have four minutes to present, with three minutes to respond to questions. After all groups have presented, I will call members of each group to the front of the room to individually vote on their favorites using the money (I’m thinking of simply laying down sheets of paper on a table, labeled “Group 1,” “Group 2,” etc., so students can see money piling up.)

I’ve informed students that they can distribute the money however they want, except that voting for their own group is prohibited. Members of the group that receives the largest sum of money will have two points added to their final average.

For those who are interested, this webpage has links to free print-your-own money.

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Live from the 1st Annual NEGMA Conference @ MIT Media Lab

I’m sitting in a large 6th floor room of the MIT Media Lab at the 1st Annual NEGMA Conference, “Innovative Solutions for a Brighter Egypt.” The conference is an application of active learning principles.

The conference is in part designed to support entrepreneurship, innovation, and social development in Egypt. Ten finalists, selected through an outside expert review process, are competing to have their projects funded by NEGMA’s supporters. Project proposals range from equipping small digital fabrication labs to vocational training for the disabled.

So far I’ve gotten three main lessons from the conference. First, when large sums of money are at stake, presentation skills are crucial. Earlier today competitors were required to pitch their proposals to conference attendees, who then voted on their favorites. People who botched their presentations were left at a distinct disadvantage.

Second, collaboration with peers has value. After the presentations, projects were workshopped among conference participants in small groups — in a process that’s very similar to what happens at the APSA’s Teaching and Learning Conference. The finalists’ project proposals were strengthened for tomorrow’s presentations before judges.

The third lesson is that the unbundling of higher education will continue apace, whether we like or not. The traditional four-year, full-time, residential model of undergraduate education is dead. The technology of the internet is indeed making it possible for anyone to learn anything at anytime from anyone. As stated this morning by Wael Fakharany, Google’s regional director for Egypt and North Africa, every minute sixty hours of video are uploaded onto YouTube. Every day, 30 million devices connect to the internet in Egypt alone. Globally, Google handles 4 billion searches daily. This digital landscape is how people around the world will be accessing affordable and effective education — even in areas like vocational training.

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More Thoughts On Presentations

If students are presenting on a text, I require them to at minimum identify:

– the topic of the text.

– the thesis of the text, and locate where in the text it is stated by the text’s author.

– how the author uses sources, not simply in the manner of copy and paste, but as part of a dialogue with others.

Students usually meet the first two requirements fairly easily, but occasionally stumble on the third. I advise students to try to answer the question “What message is the author trying to get across about her or his work in relations to that of others?”

If the historical or academic setting of a text is unfamiliar to students (and most are), I ask them to include some type of dramatis personae in their presentations. I want them to elaborate on how the people or ideas discussed in the text connect to each other and to specific places and/or times that may be implicitly or explicitly referenced within it.