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BIO 425 Presentations 

Guidelines

        Pick a topic within the assigned chapter for your week, for example, a subtitled subsection of the chapter. Let me know your topic in advance .

        Prepare a brief (~8 min) talk on that topic, and relate it to the overall theme of that particular chapter. 

        After your talk, you'll have a minute or two to tell us how you think it went, after which you'll get constructive feedback from your classmates and me on your content, craft, and presence.

o       Content: this is the curricular material that you are trying to get across, and we will evaluate how well you do this. This reflects whether or not you hit all the points on your topic. Content refers to the actual science in the presentation, or to take an analogy from a lecture course, it's how well you cover what will be on the test.

o       Craft: this corresponds to what we normally think of as pedagogy. It reflects how your talk was structured. Think of your talk as a bit of performance art. Craft covers how well you communicated, whether you used imagery or stories to amplify your points, how well your parts fit together, and what parts were effective or not effective. 

o       Presence: this reflects on how well you connected with your audience (e.g. eye contact, dialogue, empathy), and whether you were "present" with your audience, or running on "autopilot." Presence reflects your passion for that material and for getting it across to your students. To borrow another metaphor from acting, it's how well you "become the part." 

        Dan Janzen's (famous ecologist) advice on giving talks at professional meetings.

o       Tell them what you are going to say.

o       Say it.

o       Tell them what you said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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