Monday, October 14, 2013
Student Presentation Boredom
When is it more educational to have students listen to each other's presentations without any requirement other than to listen and clap? This may lead to boredom in the audience. I have a group of 24, each of whom present for between 5 and 10 minutes. 3 or 4 class periods go by without anything else going on except presentations. Is this a valid use of the listener's time? An alternative I have used is to have students ask topical questions and get credit for it. Or students are asked to keep a log of the main ideas for a quiz later. Or student listeners also take turns asking standard questions that each presenter must answer. This becomes the interactive structure of the presentation where different students take turns asking the lead questions. Or another silent seatwork task is given that students must complete before the last set of presentations finishes. Other ideas?
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I often wonder how much students learn from watching their peers present something to them if they are just required to sit there, listen, and clap when the presentation is over. If they are not held accountable for any type of feedback, they could be off in another world in their minds while they are viewing a presentation. A lot of students may also not be paying attention to the speaker presenting because they are too busy worrying about their own presentation and merely thinking about what they'll say/do when it's THEIR time to present. That anxiety fills their minds and then they are not paying attention at all to the current presenter. I really like some of the alternative options you suggested to get your students more involved in the presentations and ensuring that they have some way to show you they have learned from their peers. Requiring the students to ask one question for credit might be the best option because then they are required to actually think critically when they are watching the presentation. I think another idea to use to ensure that your students are listening and learning from the presentations is to have the students fill out a short feedback form after each presentation where they are asked to write a sentence or two to sum up what they learned and a question they may have about the presentation. Then those students who may not be comfortable with orally asking questions in the class will have a way of still giving their opinion without being anxious about asking a question out loud to the rest of the class. You could also make it a requirement that the presenters have to include a brief quiz based on the content of their presentation and after each presentation finishes, the class takes 5 minutes to answer the quiz. You collect them and read them over (maybe not for assessment), but just to see if the students have learned anything from watching their peers present!
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