Robert A. Malkin, The University of Memphis
Near the beginning of the semester, students are given a suggested list of fairly narrow topics. The topics are based on the theoretical material of the class. Each student must select one topic. In all cases, the students are expected to read and understand at least four recent journal articles on their selected topic. A three hour lecture on technical speaking, and question and answer sessions, is provided for each class. During the final exam, all students present to the class. The audience is partially graded on the questions. The presenter is graded based on both the technical mastery of the material, as well as the quality of the presentation itself.
Preliminary results are very encouraging. Students show great enthusiasm for researching the topics of their choice. However, the students universally dread the presentation of that research. The incorporation of a lecture on speaking skills targeted to their needs dramatically reduces their apprehension. Some student frustration has resulted from a topic selection which is overly broad, or narrow. The quality of the presentations has been of such a high quality, that we are planning a public presentation of the best speakers, with appropriate awards and recognition.
Almost all engineers must orally present their work to their peers. In the corporate setting, promotion and project funding are often based-at least in part-on the ability to present the group's results to management. In the academic setting, an inability to convincingly present the results of a scientific inquiry can be career threatening. Furthermore, the scientific presentation is often a challenging format. For industrial presentations, the peer group may include management, some of whom have little or no technical background. For graduate students, important findings must often be conveyed in 15 minutes, to a large audience, who may have seen dozens of similar presentations that day. Despite the importance of the ability to orally present technical information, and the difficult nature of typical technical talks, most undergraduates receive a minimum of presentation training. In order to better prepare our students, at the City College of New York, we have begun a project to integrate student presentations into advanced undergraduate classes in engineering.
The following educational objectives were proposed for this project
This paper presents the proposed methods for achieving these objectives. In addition, we have now completed two semesters with integrated presentations. Therefore, this paper also presents some of our preliminary results with this format.
As a result of our planning and subsequent experience, we have identified the following areas as being most important to the success of this project: 1) topic selection, 2) teaching speaking, 3) practice talks, 4) the format. Each of these will be discussed in turn, with preliminary results where available.
One of the most important parameters for the successful integration of oral presentations into a senior elective is topic selection. The students must present topics which are neither too narrow nor broad. If the topic is too narrow, the student will be frustrated by the lack of available information. If the topic is too broad, the student will be frustrated with an inability to present the material in the allotted time. Although both narrow and broad topics must be avoided, in our experience, students tend to pick topics which are far too broad. We have developed several strategies to combat this tendency.
In this project, a student's topic had to be approved by the instructor. In order to avoid competition between students, no two students were allowed to present the same, or even very similar topics. Most professors involved in this project provided students with preapproved lists of topics. In one case, the students were simply given the names of journals that publish review articles in the appropriate field. Some students selected their topic electronically. These students were provided with a list of required and optional electronic key words. The students then used a data base to search for topics which include all the required key words, and as many of the optional key words as they like. Some students found the electronic topic selection method unpalatable. Perhaps the best approach is to provide several mechanisms for the student to pick a topic.
No matter how the student generates the topic, the instructor must ensure that it is germane to the class, and neither too narrow or broad. We measured the breadth of the topic by estimating the number of recent journal articles written on that topic. A minimum of three or four recent papers was found to be a sufficient criteria for avoiding excessively narrow topics. Many students selected topics that were too broad, however, no instructors reported problems identifying topics which were too broad.
Despite incorporating many of the mechanisms described above into this project, we still discovered some students who became frustrated with their topics. In order to encourage this frustration to surface near the beginning of the semester (when a poor topic selection can be easily corrected) all students were required to do some of their topic research during the first few weeks of the semester. This was accomplished by requiring either a short oral or written presentation of the topic.
One of the educational objectives was for the students to learn the basic accepted practices of technical presentations and some basic public speaking skills. Most of the professors involved in this project devoted at least some lecture time to the basics, and mechanics, of technical presentations. For example, all the students were instructed on the availability of computer tools on campus, the mechanics of making overheads from these tools, and a few basic notions of effective visuals (simple bullet visuals, and simple graphed data visuals were discussed). In addition, all presentations were structured in a format typical of conference presentations (final presentation format is discussed in more detail below).
It is our universal experience that these lectures are appreciated by the students. A particular concern of the students, which was addressed, is the question and answers session (specifically, what to do if they do not know the answer to a question). Despite at least some emphasis on quality visuals by all instructors, many students used cluttered visuals with excessively small fonts.
There was not universal agreement among the professors involved in this project on the value of teaching the students the basics of public speaking. There was also variations in the public speaking abilities of professors themselves. Therefore, the only method used universally for students to develop public speaking skills was the talk itself, and practice talks.
Since practicing the skills of public speaking was one of the goals of this project, all of the faculty involved in this project encouraged the students to practice their talks in front of their peers. However, this was found to have little effectiveness in achieving the educational objective. Therefore, some classes were required to present their topic several times over the course of the semester. The presentation length and required technical depth grew with successive presentations, and the students received at least some feedback after each speech. While this format dramatically increased the amount of lecture hours devoted to the presentation, it also dramatically improved the achievement of the educational objectives. Approximately 4 lecture hours and the 3 hour final period were required to achieve three presentations per student. It is our finding that most of the improvement occurs between the first and second presentations. Therefore, future classes will only incorporate one short practice talk near the beginning of the semester and a second presentation.
One of the most unexpected outcomes of this project was the importance of the format used for the final presentation. Many students complained about the format during our initial experience. Two general problems surfaced. The first is that all of the students-even the most shy-tended to speak too long. The second problem was that the question and answer periods often generated fascinating discussions which lasted even longer than the presentations themselves. Cutting off either the talks or the discussions discouraged, and in some cases angered, the students. In order to avoid such problems, the instructor must establish and disseminate a rigid format for the final presentations.
Students should be given both a minimum and a maximum time limit for their speeches. Violating the time limits should be punished (perhaps with grade reductions). Severe violators of the maximum time limit should be cutoff. Despite these rigid time constraints, and increasingly severe punishment for violating them, fully 50%of the students in one class violated the maximum time limit. Five percent had to be cutoff for severe violations of the time limit. Considering the premium that management places on their time, and the rigid format of most conferences, teaching students that it is very difficult to present technical information in a limited time frame may be the most valuable unanticipated outcome of this project. Unfortunately, little success can be reported on actually teaching students to stay within the allotted time.
Limiting discussion is more problematic than limiting presentation time. In our experience, the discussions often lead to educational opportunities for the students. Thus, while extended discussions probably do not help achieve the educational objectives of this project, they may help achieve the overall objectives of the class, if the topics are well selected. However, cutting off discussion based on the discussions content appears arbitrary to some students, again discouraging future discussions. We found that a balance between educational objectives and student motivation was best struck by setting a fixed limit on either the discussion time, or the number of questions, rather than risk appearing arbitrary in terminating discussions.
It should be noted that all the instructors involved in this project gave the students a quiz at the end of the presentations. Students were expected to be able to describe the basic features of each of their peers talks. This practice is probably partially responsible for the lengthy discussions which followed particularly confusing presentations.
An early discovery of the participants of this project was that students preferred to present their topics without using visuals, despite the fact that this dramatically reduced their ability to convey technical information. During the first presentations, only 5%of the students used bullet slides, and 30%of the students presented no technically effective slides at all. The problem did not appear to be an inability to access the software and hardware tools required to create effective visuals. Some improvement resulted from requiring a minimum number of visuals, or setting a maximum amount of time between reference to a visual. However, the need for these requirements suggests that we did not achieve all of our educational objectives. In the future, we will try several strategies to improve the use of visuals, e.g., more visual creation training, more visual examples, etc.
Many of the students that participated in this project were surveyed at the end of their class. Most project participants reported that the presentation component of the class was both the most difficult and most important single component of the class. All of the professors involved have reported an overall enthusiasm for the project. An interesting benefit of this exercise is that all of the professors involved reported learning a great deal from the students presentations! Perhaps we should turn the lectern over to them more often.