Involving Students in Presentations

Here are some thoughts on how to involve your fellow students in your final project presentations. Remember, you have only about 15 minutes which will go much faster than you think. Try to involve students interactively as much as you can and avoid just lecturing at them.

1. Give students an outline of your presentation, including a brief bibliography to make it easier to follow along and so that they can refer to the books later if they want to.

2. Use some visual aids to help stimulate thought and attention: Whiteboard, Overhead Projector, Posters, Powerpoint presentation. Let me know if you have any particular audio-visual needs.

3. Raise a question at the beginning -- a pre-task activity. Give students a minute or two to think about it.

4. Give students a task to do: a fill-in the blanks exercise, an information-gap activity, some discussion questions. Give us a (brief) pre and post test, or a multiple choice quiz.

5. Avoid lecturing or speaking too fast. Students just can't follow if you try to put too much into a short time. If you find yourself running out of time, just edit as you go and omit some points. It is better that we understand two points well than five points badly.

6. Have a good "hook" to get our attention and pull us into your presentation.

7. Have a strong conclusion. Don't just wimp out at the end. Let us know from the content that you have made your points.

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