Improving Oral Presentation Design, Delivery, and Feedback in Large Lecture Courses through Interactive Online In-Class Activities

Improving Oral Presentation Design, Delivery, and Feedback in Large Lecture Courses through Interactive Online In-Class Activities

Grant:
Teaching with Technology Institute (TTI)
Academic Year:
2012 - 2013 (June 1, 2012 through May 31, 2013)
Funding Requested:
$2,500.00
Project Dates:
-
Applicant(s):
sheffie
Overview of the Project:
Research indicates that students in large lecture classes learn better when traditional lectures are replaced by interactive approaches to teaching, but implementing such approaches can be challenging. In Chemical Engineering 460, a large senior-level lecture course in which I am charged with helping my students master the design and delivery of oral presentations, I have found it particularly difficult to provide students with opportunities to engage in real-time conversations about what makes oral presentations effective. I propose to use Google Docs (or another free cloud-based computing platform with similar features) to develop a series of online, in-class activities wherein groups of students--using their own laptops, tablet computers, or cell phones--access a given sample slide or presentation video and, using built-in commenting and chat features, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the sample and develop (and, time permitting, implement) a plan to revise the sample to increase its effectiveness.
Final Report Fields
Project Objectives:
To better meet my students' need for interactive, engaging classroom instruction by using technology resources to convert existing lectures into in-class (largely online) activities.
Project Achievements:
My students have responded very well to the incorporation of more interactive elements in my lectures (in particular, my BME 452 students list this lecture activity as the most useful of the term). I'm still looking for ways to overcome the challenges inherent in this kind of in-class activity for large lecture classes (e.g., ensuring that students bring/have access to computers capable of participating in the activity, dealing with unpredictable attendance on in-class activity days). I have shared my activity, materials, and other resources I learned about through the TTI program with several of my colleagues, and I know some of them are considering similar revisions to some of their lectures.
Continuation:
Absolutely--I'm still using the activities I developed, and am looking for ways to integrate similar activities into my other classes and to convert other lectures into interactive in-class activities to make my lecture periods more dynamic.
Dissemination:
As mentioned in a previous section, I have shared my materials and resources with several of my colleagues, and hope to collaborate with them in the future to improve all of our classroom offerings. I also presented at a panel at the close of the TTI program to shared my initial findings.
Advice to your Colleagues:
First, I would recommend keeping an eye on your project scope--it was tempting to me, as I learned about all of the available technologies and other resources that could help me to transform my classroom approach, to take on far more than I could handle in a single semester. Thinking about the project in stages helped me to make an implementation plan that was more reasonable. It is also useful to over-plan for contingencies--the first time I intended to do my planned in-class activity, I'd planned for many eventualities, but not for low attendance (this class happened to fall on the first beautiful, warmish day of the Winter term, and shockingly, attendance was very low), and I was unable to do the activity.
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