Student presentations do not equal student engagement: Opinion

In a recent article for Times Higher Education, Gary Thomas discusses the challenges associated with requiring students to complete graded presentations. Thomas argues that presentations cause many students extreme anxiety, and that these students often give poor presentations due to their stress levels. Given that most students are not studying presentation or communication through their pursuit of postsecondary education, Thomas recommends that educators instead focus their classroom time on the subject at hand and foster genuine student engagement. “The ubiquity of presentations, if we’re honest, has as much to do with the calculations behind teaching hours as with nurturing communication skills,” concludes Thomas. “We all want student engagement – but let’s not confuse it with some notion of ‘transferable skill’ in a pretence that the latter is a validly assessable feature of a university curriculum.” Times Higher Ed (Acct. Req.) Note: Archived stories may contain dead links or be missing source links.