Team persentations and workshops

Using team presentations and workshops

Using team presentations and workshops conducted by teams are good methods to help students develop team work skills, conduct team research, and involve the entire class in diverse activities.

I choose to word the two methods differently since I consider "presentations" to be what the word means in fact: a team (a person) will present the results of a completed work to a specific audience, usually followed by a Q & A section. This form is a very good one to help your students develop skills they will use for conference presentations, or interview.

"Workshops" are a type of presentation that along with presenting the results of a team/person's work will also involve the audience in several short activities to demonstrate briefly the application of the topic in discussion. Might involve testing, trying, building, brainstorming activities, etc.

The advantage of workshops over simple presentations is that the audience is more involved.

The disadvantage is that usually workshops require a longer time than a plain presentation.

Attached one model of using workshop as assignment in a course, as well as the Team workshop evaluation that will be used by the audience to evaluate the team presentation/workshop.

You (the instructor) also will complete the same "Team workshop evaluation" form -- of course your feedback might be more detailed than the one provided by the students in the class.

It is always a good exercise for your students to evaluate each other, that will keep their attention focused on the presentation, as well as give them one more skill by practicing good feedback.

There are two ways to use the team evaluation.

1. Ask the students in the audience to complete anonymous the evaluation; you complete the same form. Gather all the evaluations and after class read them all, staple yours on top, grade the presentation of the team; and next class time give the presenting team the entire package of feedback. In this case you measure only the team, and the evaluation done by the audience is only as an exercise in giving feedback to peers. The Learning Outcome for this should sound like this:

"Students will demonstrate the ability to sustain in class team presentations."

2. Ask the students in the audience to complete the evaluation form, and on the back of the sheet to write their own name. You will complete the same evaluation form. Gather all forms. Make copy of the front page (of the evaluation form) staple all together having on top your evaluation feedback. Next class time give the presenting team the entire package of feedback (with the copies of evaluation forms from the audience). Take all the original forms and sort them in pile by student names. Gather across the semester all original forms by student name. At the end of the semester revise the feedback provided by each student. Make sure in this case that a part of the grade is accounted for by the peer review of team presentations. The Learning Outcome for this should sound like this:

"Students will demonstrate the ability to provide critical feedback for peers who are involved in team presentations."



The first method works well even when you have a larger class (perhaps no more than 50). The second method (revising the peer feedback by individual student) works when you have small classes. It becomes very cumbersome and time consuming if you use the method for classes larger than 30 students.

In using this method explain your students that a good feedback is like a sandwich with three parts:

1. What was good

2. What needs to be improved.

3. Provide some ideas of how to improve the weak parts.