Oral Presentations

I’m preparing my course syllabi for next semester and I just had a brilliant idea for how to make oral presentations more meaningful. I hate oral presentations for several reasons. First, there is Google that creeps into every presentation. Then there is the sad fact that while one person is delivering the presentation, everybody else in the class is distracted, snoozing, texting, or doing their homework. I have 25 students in each class, which means that if everybody presents for 30 minutes, that’s over 12 hours of class time eaten by these presentations that most people don’t even listen to. And I don’t do group presentations in advanced courses because I don’t believe in the concept. Plus, I don’t want to arbitrate in the endless disputes of who in the group did all of the work and who did none.

So here is what I have come up with. We have two thick history textbooks in one of my courses. One is 500 pages, another one is almost 300. (These are the old textbooks I had to make do with because the one I chose wasn’t made available.) There is no way we will be able to read both of these textbooks in class. So. Here is the new format for the presentations:

Each student will get assigned several pages from the textbook that we won’t cover in class.

The student will have to read, understand, and teach the material to the rest of class (in Spanish, obviously).

The grade will depend on how well everybody understands the material.

After the presentation, the class will do a small quiz I will prepare in advance based on this material. And everybody will be motivated to listen and try to understand the material because the quiz will be part of their participation grade.

This will remove the problem of “Why is my grade so low? It’s all just your subjective opinion.” Plus, every student who presents will see how hard my job is, which is always an added bonus.

Is this genius, or what?