Presentations are a very common task in education, either as a summary/review or as assessment (or both). However, student presentations tend to fall short of teacher expectations for the very simple reason that the students don’t do enough research and they tend to end up copy-pasting usually too much text onto slides and reading out whatever they first bumped into after a quick Google search. The introduction of ChatGPT might elevate the experience a bit, but not necessarily much. The end result is a boring presentation where the students didn’t learn much and the audience feel their time has been wasted.
Students need to be taught how to run a meaningful and interesting presentation. They also need to be given the success criteria in advance so that they know what successful completion of the task looks like. This blog post doesn’t deal with the key features of an effective presentation, neither does it explain how success criteria need to be written, especially because ChatGPT is quite good at writing rubrics. This blog posts presents four alternative ideas to the traditional and mainly boring read-out-the-slides kind of student presentation.
- Shark Tank. Organise a Shark Tank like experience for the students. Invite teachers to judge the students’ presentation in a true cross-curricular manner. Try to incorporate as much of the show’s spectacular elements as possible. The students need to be equipped with some business knowledge so that they know how to convince the sharks. As such, use this format if you want to bring together several elements of the curriculum, such as business, subject knowledge (the pitch can be related to any subject from social studies to chemistry), and English/mother tongue (presentation skills). It also tests how well students think on their feet as they need to answer the sharks’ questions in a convincible manner.
- TED talk. Organise a TED talk event if you want the students to dig deeper into a topic and/or present an interesting, well built-up and though-provoking presentation. It is not as fast-paced as the Shark Tank format, so it’s better suited to introverted students. The students need to be familiar with the structure of a well-built up presentation, they need to know how to grab and keep the audience’s attention, which takes some preparation. If the students manage to get prepared with something truly interesting, this can be a rewarding experience for all participants. If you want to go above and beyond, apply for the TEDx licence to organise the real deal.
- CEO introducing a new idea. Think of Steve Jobs or more recently Mark Zuckerberg. Use this format if you want the students to think outside of the box or innovate in one way or another. These CEOs usually present new products or innovative ideas they think will change how consumers think of the experience of communication (iPhone) or interacting with others (metaverse). Not all these presentations have been successful, but they usually attract a lot of viewers because people are hungry for innovative new ideas. So use this format in case you encourage your students to experiment and push boundaries. Students need to be taught how to build up such presentations and how to engage with their audience to sell them a new idea.
- Elevator pitch. An elevator pitch is a very short presentation that can be presented to someone during an elevator ride, so it needs to be super focused and it needs to raise interest within moments. Use this format if you have a lot of students, a very short amount of time, or if you want to assess if the students have understood the main ideas of a concept.
Do you like any of the above ideas? Do you have a similar idea? Have tried out any of them? Let us know how it went and if the students liked it in the comments section below.
