All members of the teaching team are keen to embark on new challenges within the curriculum and this semester we were asked to teach a new SQA HN Unit entitled 'Presentation Skills in Science' to the HNC Applied Science students. It has been a number of years since we have serviced this Unit and as the lecturer timetabled for the job I was keen to find out more about the task in hand. The unit is split into four sections:
- Produce a scientific laboratory report
- Edit scientific text
- Produce a scientific poster
- Deliver an oral presentation on a scientific topic
This post concerns the fourth outcome, where learners were asked to deliver an oral presentation lasting no shorter than 5 minutes on their progress in the Graded Unit with Keith Hoisington, SL within the Science section.
Students were asked to structure their talk using the following guidelines from the brief Keith and I devised:
Slide 1 – title slide (this will include your name, title of your Graded Unit project, date of delivery)
Slide 2 – structure slide (this should state what each section of your talk will be about)
Slides 3-7 - the amount of slides will be variable depending on the focus of your talk but should include the following headings: a clear overview of what your project is about, why you chose the topic, what you knew about your topic before you started the project, what you have found out in your research, what sources of information you have been using and a clear outline of what you intend to do for the remainder of the project (content, resources and timeline).
Slide 8 – conclusion (bullet point 3 or 4 points you would like to re-emphasise)
Slide 9 – a slide with the heading ‘what I have learned’. This could include info on subjects such as difficulties encountered with research, problems encountered, time management strategies, content based etc.
Slide 10 – sources used (this is important and if you are noting websites, please ensure that you include the hyperlink as we may ask you to see this in the q and a session)
Slide 11 – thank you for listening. Do you have any questions?
I held a series of meetings with Keith who was extremely helpful in providing ideas to cement the 'science based' learning and we were keen to ensure that the students were not only reviewing what they
had done, but what they
still had to do to ensure their Graded Unit work was on track. I was impressed with the level of work produced from the students and as way of preparation for the summative work the students were given a series of oral presentation classes covering a variety of 'nuts and bolts' type learning, as well as evaluating recorded talks as well as delivering a series of formative presentations which certainly helped their delivery. I ensured that all students received feedback from me, from their peers as well as self reflecting on their performance, balancing the good with providing an agenda to improve for the summative delivery. To help the students I constructed a mock talk about my own learning which the students found helpful and those slides as well as a couple of student presentations can be seen below as way of example.
The following themes were fedback to the stduents after their presentations:
- Reflecting on thier time management and organisational skills as well as their research methodology is VERY important
- This brief was devised to strike a balance between what they did know, didn't know, what they now know and how they processed the info and dealt with problems.
- These skills are of great import if students have aspirations to study at University.
I have used the D2L to reflect on the classes we have had and the collegiate approach shown by Keith and Joanne (Mitchell) has been very helpful to the learning process so far. Students are quite clear what is being expected of them, how it will be of benefit to them and see very clearly that the three lecturers are working together harmoniously. Now all I have to do is figure out what a scientific poster is and work some magic around the structuring and purpose of that for the next assessment and we will be on track for further success!
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