Objective:
- To expose students to working within a high pressure, novel, real-world environment.
- To develop students presentation and communication skills.
- To develop students teamwork and interpersonal skills.
- To develop students ability to communicate information effectively to diverse audiences.
Overview:
The ability to work well as a team, to develop and manage effective relationships with a diverse range of audiences, and to be skilled in communication are essential for any student, irrespective of their programme of study, or future career aspirations.
This simple activity encourages students to develop these skills, by inviting them to become the teachers, working in teams to develop presentations, and delivering them to a given audience.
The activity requires minimal presentation, can be easily adapted to suit any group, with ample room to extension activities, and also serves as an effective revision activity for students.
Activity:
Pre-Activity
- Set-up for this activity is minimal.
- You may wish to gather any resources or props in advance of the session, available for students to use in delivering their presentations.
- You may wish to invite in a particular individual or group, to serve as an audience to student presentations.
- You may wish to set students preparatory work to do in advance of the session.
Part 1
- Inform students that they are to prepare a presentation of a given length, on a given subject, for presentation to an audience.
- Provide students with information regarding the subject matter which must be covered.
- Provide students with information regarding the audience for their presentation – To enhance the 'real' element to this task, an external audience may be invited to receive these presentations. This could include students from other courses or year groups, school students, industry relevant professionals or otherwise.
- Provide students with a deadline by which their presentations must be ready to deliver - To provide students with experience of working under pressure, with risk and uncertainly, this deadline could be very tight (i.e. a matter of minutes or hours), with no prior warning of the task. If depth of research and quality of presentation takes precedence, this activity could be spread across a number of sessions, or students provided with advance warning in order to prepare appropriately.
Part 2
- Students organise themselves into teams.
- Within teams, students delegate tasks, and research and prepare their presentations.
- You may wish to allow students access to any appropriate props and resources, computers etc. to support them in this (as time and circumstance permits).
- You may wish to set additional rules to groups (for example, every individual within the group must speak during the presentation).
Part 3
- Students deliver their presentations to one another, and their invited audience.
- You may wish to allow the audience to ask questions to presenters and for students to assess one another as they present.
- You may wish for presentation to be recorded.
Post Activity
- Students can feedback on their experience of the activity (what did they enjoy? what did they find most challenging? what did the activity teach them?).
- If filmed, recording of presentations may be watched and analysed, or made available to students as revision tools.
Skill Development:
- Students will develop their team work and communication skills, be better equipped to work to tight deadlines and under pressure, and more adept at communicating information in an appropriate way for a given audience.
- They will have had opportunities to reflect on their own abilities as communicators, and considers means by which they could improve.
- They will have consolidated the knowledge they were set to present through the task.
Resources:
- An appropriate audience for students to present to.
- Assess to resources, for students use in preparing presentations.