Oral Presentations

[eigen]

Hah, I make my first year students do PechaKucha talks in our introductory seminar course (and of course have to do it myself to model it). It's a lot of fun.

[Langue_doc]

See my comments on the Discussions thread.

I have small-group discussions, where each group is assigned one of the four or five questions from the current reading. A student from each group writes out the response, and another student presents the response to the class. There are follow-up questions/comments to the responses from the other groups. Topics for group discussions also include paragrahps to check for errors in style, formatting, and/or sentence structure. Groups spend no more than 10-15 minutes on their assigned discussions. Discussions come under "Attendance & Participation" which counts for 10% of the overall grade, so students find the six rules of discussion that I posted upthread to be quite helpful. I've never had students refuse to join a group for class discussions.

Students also present an overview of their essays and research papers, and field questions and comments from their classmates. Most departments/couses include some oral presentation assignments as our institution requires a sentence or two in the syllabus to the effect that students are assessed on their reading, writing, speaking, and critical thinking skills.

[Minervabird]

For my classs (and I think this is fairly typical), students aren't presenting their own data, they are presenting on a research paper they have read and the rest of the class has not.

I do a mix: presenting on other people's work in classes, and presenting on their own work in labs.

(I still remember my shock when learning from a friend in grad school in the humanities that they literarily stood up at conferences and read a paper to the audience with no slides. How do they not all just doze off at conferences? Anyway, to each their own!).

I hit this realization hard in grad school. I organized a series of interdisciplinary symposia aimed at getting grad students across the university to get together and share their research. The first time someone from history just stood up and read a paper with no visual aids was a hard adjustment. The audience was split between "this is totally normal" and "wtf is happening". Overall that whole series was a great way to learn not just about other peoples work, but also get a glimpse into what a PhD was like across dozens of different fields.

Well, we in the humanities do read our papers at conferences, but we also have slides and visuals. That's just a norm of the profession. Conference presentations are about 15-25 minutes usually, so I would hope the audience could hold attention for that length of time without taking a nap.

Interesting! Does it depend on area? I was told visuals were considered unprofessional by a colleague in philosophy.

In my area conference presentations range from 15-30 minutes depending on venue, and the goal is to give enough background that a broad audience can follow the main point of your talk. So you usually spend the first bit giving background on what you're studying and why and a quick lesson about some key points, then dive into the data to tell a particular narrative surrounding some interesting thread you've found.

Said philosopher is a bit old fashioned. I'm in an interdisciplinary field, and I structure my presentations as described above... Some context including a hook to get the audience interested, the main argument, a brief outline of key points, and then off I go.  I've given specialised academic papers, public lectures that were part of an academic prize, as well as given a lecture series for the public.  Other than the outline slide, there is little text on my slides...mostly visuals or an occasional quote.

[Puget]

It's hard to imagine a more embarrassing way to goof up a presentation than by accidentally destroying a projector screen. 

That was pretty bad, I've seen a a few others that would say "hold my beer" to that assertion:

1. This one is the most vicariously embarrassing thing I've ever seen. When I was a wee undergrad participating in a summer-long research program at another university, we all attended a faculty job talk there, in which the speaker (who remember, was interviewing for a faculty position) had her cell phone ring during her talk. Ok, so you forget to silence your cell phone, not a huge deal, grab it, silence it, apologize and move on right? Oh no, nope, instead she answered the call and explained she couldn't talk right now because she was on a job interview. This was the early day of cell phones, but even so and even as ignorant wee undergrads, we were completely stunned by this and couldn't stop talking about it afterward. She did not get the job.

2. Another job talk, this one when I was a postdoc. Part way through the talk, the speaker's Windows laptop popped up a message saying it needed to restart to install updates. Speaker frantically clicked "install later" but apparently "later" meant 10 minutes later, because the message popped back up once or twice more, and then the computer apparently decided it had had enough waiting and shut down. At which point we all waited at least 10 minutes for it to install updates and restart while the speaker tried to ad lib her talk with no visuals. Although it was not precisely her fault, it did not go well. She did not get the job. Lessons: (1) use a Mac, (2) if you must use Windows, be sure to install all updates before any important talks.

3. A very senior famous researcher giving a keynote conference presentation upon receiving some sort of lifetime achievement award. We knew we were in for it when instead of some interesting hook at the beginning, he started with a timeline of his career going back to the 80s. Whole hour long talk consisted of basically a tour of his CV. The hour allotted came and went and we were still had the last ten years left (and it truly felt like we'd been sitting there for decades). Apparently no one felt they could tell him to stop, so the audience just started leaving, a few at first ducking out, then in waves.

[kaysixteen]

1) One does learn something new every day.  I really had no notion that this sort of grad school-style read someone else's stuff, something the other students have not read themselves, and then lead a class discussion on it, was normative in undergrad science classes.  I suppose I could have gleaned this myself, but it is clear that science training even at this level is quite different, and vastly more group focused.   I still have the question of what the professor is supposed to do to suppress ignorance amongst the student discussants.

2) It is also true that it has been several years since I have attended a professional conference, and when I last did attend these, especially in hard humanities fields like classics (not so much in professional fields like lib sci), it just was expected that the presenter show his paper, and would have probably been seen as insulting for said presenter to show up and pass out prepared for educated laymen-style presentations.   It is certainly not the expectation that the presenter should use salesmanship or other rhetorical techniques to convince his audience to buy what he is selling, either.

[Puget]

I still have the question of what the professor is supposed to do to suppress ignorance amongst the student discussants.

Really? Perhaps think about it for a minute and realize the professor doesn't vacate the room nor acquire a gag while the discussion is happening, and thus is available to offer correction and further explanation if needed?

I don't mind providing some education to you Kay, but I do very much mind your persistence in assuming those in other fields are somehow too stupid to teach right, based on your total ignorance of what constitutes effective pedagogy and standard practice on those fields. 

[Langue_doc]

I still have the question of what the professor is supposed to do to suppress ignorance amongst the student discussants.

Really? Perhaps think about it for a minute and realize the professor doesn't vacate the room nor acquire a gag while the discussion is happening, and thus is available to offer correction and further explanation if needed?

I don't mind providing some education to you Kay, but I do very much mind your persistence in assuming those in other fields are somehow too stupid to teach right, based on your total ignorance of what constitutes effective pedagogy and standard practice on those fields. 

Why would anyone assume ignorance on the part of the students? According to Puget,

For my classs (and I think this is fairly typical), students aren't presenting their own data, they are presenting on a research paper they have read and the rest of the class has not. Yes, they must have slides, including figures and key points. They are responsible for explaining the background, methods and results of the study, then leading discussion (I require them to include two discussion question prompts for the class).

This is not some artificial thing we do just for class, it a standard "journal club" format that is common in lab meetings and program-wide journal clubs. It is not just a tool for teaching how to give presentations,  it is an effective format for learning about and discussing research. The class is expected to take notes and learn from the presenter, and then contribute actively to the discussion. Moreover, it models how we do science -- by learning from one another and thinking through things together. Science is not a solo sport.

This replicates what most of us do at professional conferences--take notes on papers that we are hearing for the first time, and use those notes for follow-up discussions. When I was a grad student pre-internet, presenters would have handouts so that we could follow along the main points, and also take notes.

[Minervabird]

As far as discussions after student presentations, students were required to ask questions of other students, and I would gently correct and guide.  That's just basic pedagogy. I would offer that is true of most, if not all fields.

As an aside....Whether my field in humanities is a solo sport or not is interesting.  Not so much in big digital humanities projects, museum exhibits, networking grants, etc.  But the monograph is still the gold standard for getting tenure, and that is a mostly solo sport. You get the excellent help of librarians, and colleagues will read it and see what they think, but it is your name on the cover. It is fairly easy post retirement to keep publishing books at least from an infrastructure point of view.  I know of a few over 80s who still write and present at conferences and give darn fine talks. I do see, however, that getting the grant, and the subsequent grant activities, are starting to be more important than the book that comes out of the grant. That is wrongheaded. The conferences and public engagement events are fine and dandy, but the book is the thing that lasts beyond the ephemeral. There are also many very fine books out there that were not grant funded.

[the_geneticist]

I went to a SLAC and we learned about science presentations by going to weekly seminars with invited speakers.  The professors who arranged the talks cleverly made sure to have free cookies and coffee in the room (nothing entices students more than free food).  Speakers planned on time for questions from the mostly undergraduate audience.  Some classes gave extra credit for attending and asking a question.  And you could meet with the speaker afterwards in a conference room - also had free food. 
My upper level classes all had us reading primary literature & leading a class discussion.  It was hard, but really good practice! 
I've been back to visit as an invited speaker, which was really awesome.  "Hey, I was a student sitting in this exact room when I was taking [Baskets 101]. Let's talk about some amazing science!"

[Minervabird]

Geneticist, sounds like the Pizza with the Prof program we had at our university...started out for the honors program and then extended to all students. Free food is a powerful draw.

[FishProf]

In our STEMy senior seminar, students write a grant proposal that includes a literature review of their chosen topic.  They have to do 3 'talks', 1) a 5-min cocktail party talk (no notes, no slides), 2) a poster-presentation suitable for a conference, and 3) a 5-8min conference-style talk (slides, no notes).  Then they have the 15-20 page(~ish) grant proposal.  These are all on the same topic and force them to present the same information in different formats to different audiences.  The differences in performance are...stark.

As I tell all my students, "if you can't communicate your work to others, it's as if you never did it".

[the_geneticist]

In our STEMy senior seminar, students write a grant proposal that includes a literature review of their chosen topic.  They have to do 3 'talks', 1) a 5-min cocktail party talk (no notes, no slides), 2) a poster-presentation suitable for a conference, and 3) a 5-8min conference-style talk (slides, no notes).  Then they have the 15-20 page(~ish) grant proposal.  These are all on the same topic and force them to present the same information in different formats to different audiences.  The differences in performance are...stark.

As I tell all my students, "if you can't communicate your work to others, it's as if you never did it".

That is an amazing learning opportunity!  I wish my graduate program had included this sort of training.
Which part do they find the most interesting and which the most challenging?

[FishProf]

About a third of my class last Spring found remembering they had a talk to give that day the most challenging.

Several students said they got better at extemporaneous speaking (they didn't know that word) and it paid off in job interviews (we also did mock interviews to prep).  Others find the feedback really crystalizes their own thinking on the topic, sometimes resulting in dramatic shifts in their next presentation.

One said she was reconsidering her career plans if she had to "talk to other people so much".

I think for all of them, they had a preferred mode of presenting the material (for some, it was not doing so) and their least-preferred modes were a challenge to shift to.

For me, it was fun to see them improve.

I make students ask questions, usually in the "you have to ask a question of the three presenters who follow you" and they get graded on those.

As to the question upthread about "ignorance amongst the student discussants", my students tend to be very strong policers of their classmates.  They know (b/c I tell them) that if they don't ask good questions of their peers, I will.  No one wants that.

[Puget]

In our STEMy senior seminar, students write a grant proposal that includes a literature review of their chosen topic.  They have to do 3 'talks', 1) a 5-min cocktail party talk (no notes, no slides), 2) a poster-presentation suitable for a conference, and 3) a 5-8min conference-style talk (slides, no notes).  Then they have the 15-20 page(~ish) grant proposal.  These are all on the same topic and force them to present the same information in different formats to different audiences.  The differences in performance are...stark.

As I tell all my students, "if you can't communicate your work to others, it's as if you never did it".

That is an amazing learning opportunity!  I wish my graduate program had included this sort of training.
Which part do they find the most interesting and which the most challenging?

This is great -- our grad students get this (minus the cocktail party talk, which is a great idea!) in the combo of grad methods + prosem + department brown bag presentations, but we don't have anything like this for undergrads. Those doing an honors thesis do have to present them publicly, and as mentioned everyone has to take at least one class that includes presentations, but this sounds like a great albeit challenging course for undergrads.

[kaysixteen]

I have never actually been to an undergrad class reunion.  I suppose I should go one day, and ask STEM alumni whether they were doing anything like this at dear alma mater forty years ago.   We never ever did it in classics, and I did not do it at the pretty darn good old-fashioned MA program therein I attended afterwards.    We did do some of these by the 90s in my PhD program (third school), but this was obviously necessary as overt prep for our professional lives as working classicists, if anyone actually got to become one of those (a few did).   But grad students are not freshmen.  I understand the desire, almost certainly greater in almost all fields and at almost all institutions than in the 1980s (which were more like the 1940s than the 2020s, in many respects, anyhow), to do more serious professsional major stuff asap, and this is not a bad thing, so long as 1) the students in your particular program could reasonably be expected to be intellectually mature and professionally knowledgeable enough to handle the material in question, and 2) taking significant class time to do this sort of thing does not substantively detract from the professor's ability (and responsibility) to actually spend the time teaching and evaluating the students' learning of the key professional concepts the class is supposed to cover (now that I thinks on it, this is a reason we do not do that much of this sort of thing when teaching classics  undergrads, too, since so much time needs to be spent on translation).  So the professor in any class like this, whatever discipline, has to patiently, and respectfully, intervene to correct ignorance when he sees it, even if he gets pushback from the kids.