Chapter Intro

Community-building Presentations

Prep Ahead

Decide how you would like students to record their presentations and where they should submit their presentations to.  Create a prompt that is culturally responsive and sensitive to different experiences and identities. Share the prompt with your students.

Ingredients

• Learning goal(s)
• Prompts/expectations for students
• Preferred presentation tool
• A place for students to upload and view others’ presentations
• Assessment and/or feedback strategy

Step by Step Instructions

1. 1. Identify your learning goals. Do you want students to give presentations in order to:

• • • Introduce themselves to you and their classmates
    • Build community by sharing information about their hobbies, interests, backgrounds, etc.
    • Share why they are interested in the course and their experience with the content or area of study
    • Engage in low stakes conversations to promote participation

1. 2. Create a prompt/instructions for the activity

• • • Sample Prompt using FlipGrid: Please introduce yourself to your classmates by sharing a short video that lets us know your name, your academic major, where you’re local to (this might not necessarily be where you’re from) and a couple of your hobbies or interests. You can record an original video or upload a file from your computer. If you don’t feel comfortable sharing a video of yourself, feel free to upload a video that illustrates your hobbies or where you’re local to. You can also just record your voice, using the “mic only” option. You have up to 5 minutes of recording time.

1. 3. Choose a recording tool and a location for students to upload and view videos.

• • • Flipgrid
      • Integrated into Canvas
      • Good for short videos that’d don’t require editing
      • Popular choice for community building exercises
    • Canvas built-in video recorder – If you’re using Canvas already, having students submit through Canvas would maintain consistency and keep materials in one place.You might consider having students post their presentations to a Canvas discussion forum and asking them to comment on each other’s work. You could also create a Canvas assignment and ask students to submit their presentations that way.
    • For short informal presentations, you may opt to allow students to use applications such as iMovie, Quicktime, or the video recorder on their cell phones. These tools are often pre-installed on computers and phones and your students may already be familiar with them. To share with others, the videos will need to be uploaded to Google Drive or another shared space. More information on video recording and editing tools.

1. 4. Give feedback/assess

• • • If presentations are a major component of your course, it can be helpful to start with shorter, low stakes presentations (such as a short FlipGrid introduction) before working up to longer presentations that involve sharing slides, making an argument, or analyzing materials.
    • It’s important that students know what their presentations will be assessed on. Are you interested in their presentation abilities? Their content? Their analysis? How long do you expect presentations to be and should students spend a certain amount of time on different components of their presentations? A rubric can be helpful both for you and your students so that expectations are clear.
    • If you expect students to watch and respond to others’ presentations, you might want to model what a successful response looks like. Don’t forget to specify how many presentations students should watch or respond to. If you have a larger class, you might consider breaking students into smaller groups to present so they don’t spend an inordinate amount of time watching presentations.
    • Any graded assessment should connect back to your learning goals and specific instructions.

Informative or Persuasive Presentations

Prep Ahead

Decide how you would like students to record their presentations and where they should submit their presentations to. Create and share a prompt with your students.

Ingredients

• Learning goal(s)
• Prompts/expectations for students
• Preferred presentation tool
• A place for students to upload and view others’ presentations
• Assessment and/or feedback strategy

Step by Step Instructions

1. 1. Identify your learning goals. Do you want students to give presentations in order to:

• • • Develop oral communication skills
    • Synthesize and analyze information
    • Improve listening skills
    • Develop multimedia skills
    • Practice giving feedback

1. 2. Create a prompt/instructions for the activity

• • • Sample Prompt: Prior to submitting your final design product, you will record a presentation in order to solicit feedback from your classmates and fine-tune your product before it is due. In your presentation, please discuss the problem your product attempts to solve, your target audience, what resources you need to design the product (material, personnel, etc.) and any questions or potential pitfalls you foresee. Presentations should be approximately 10 minutes and should be recorded using Panopto. Visual aids such as slides or other multimedia are strongly encouraged. After recording your presentation, please upload it to the Canvas discussion board labeled “Product Presentations.” Please watch your classmates’ presentations and respond to any questions they pose. You may also offer your own suggestions, particularly if you perceive any gaps or shortcomings in the product design or implementation.

1. 3. Choose a recording tool and a location for students to upload and view videos.

• • • Panopto

• • • • Integrated into Canvas
      • Good for videos that don’t require much editing
      • Popular choice for presenting slides or other materials

• • • Zoom

• • • • Students are likely to be familiar with the tool already
      • Works for presenting slides or other materials
      • If you need to edit the video, you’ll have to do so using a different tool (i.e., Panopto or Rush).

• • • Adobe Rush

• • • • Suite of entry-level editing tools
      • Available for free on Middlebury-owned computers
      • Higher learning curve. Recommended only if presentations will require editing.
      • Videos will need to be uploaded to Google Drive, One Drive, or another shared space for viewing.

1. 4. Give feedback/assess

• • • • If presentations are a major component of your course, it can be helpful to start with shorter, low stakes presentations (such as a short FlipGrid introduction) before working up to longer presentations that involve sharing slides, making an argument, or analyzing materials.
      • It’s important that students know what their presentations will be assessed on. Are you interested in their presentation abilities? Their content? Their analysis? How long do you expect presentations to be and should students spend a certain amount of time on different components of their presentations? A rubric can be helpful both for you and your students so that expectations are clear.
      • If you expect students to watch and respond to others’ presentations, you might want to model what a successful response looks like. Don’t forget to specify how many presentations students should watch or respond to. If you have a larger class, you might consider breaking students into smaller groups to present so they don’t spend an inordinate amount of time watching presentations.
      • Any graded assessment should connect back to your learning goals and specific instructions.