By Susan Ruff Johann’s presentation on partitions was carefully crafted. The math was completely correct, the board work was neat and legible, the delivery was professional, and the timing was perfect. But the talk was so dry and formal that the other students quickly reverted to the blank look that suggests they have more interesting things to think about. In contrast, Karen’s presentation on generating functions gained and held the attention of many of the students. She successfully conveyed the beauty and power of generating functions . . . to the front half of the class. The rest couldn’t hear
Read more →Posts Tagged Presentations
The questions on this form guide students to provide effective critique of their peers’ presentations. The form includes the topics “Voice and body,” “Interaction with the audience,” “Structure,” and “Content.” Each topic contains some more specific sample questions to clarify the point and scope of the topic (e.g., “I could tell where the speaker was headed at all times.”)
Read more →his lesson plan outlines a workshop on giving seminar presentations. The workshop was conducted in Mia Minnes’ Undergraduate Seminar in Logic at M.I.T. after each student had presented to the class once. The workshop included a discussion of the students’ experiences presenting, two sample presentations given by the instructor to illustrate common pitfalls and how to avoid them, a discussion of the rhetorical differences between seminar presentations and class lectures, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of various forms of presentation (slides, board, overhead).
Read more →A beamer presentation titled “More with LaTeX: Tools for slides, graphics, bibliographies, and all that” Also addresses various pros and cons of giving slide presentations in mathematics.
Read more →This sample review serves as a LaTeX template for students to critique each other’s in-class presentations. The review consists of two parts: (1) a technical summary of the contents of the lecture, and (2) a constructive critique of the delivery. Written by Steven L. Kleiman for his class Principles of Mathematical Exposition.
Read more →This one-page outline summarizes a workshop on how to give a mathematics presentation. The instructor begins by giving a practice run of a real talk he will be presenting shortly in another context, students critique the talk in pairs and then the class as a whole discusses the highest priorities for improving the talk. This workshop occurs at the beginning of the term before students have begun giving their own presentations, so the instructor concludes the workshop with some “veteran advice” for how to prepare a presentation. Links are included to handouts for critiquing a presentation and for preparing a
Read more →This form for critiquing and grading presentations is based on a student-generated list of criteria of effective math presentations. One instructor who used this form for grading commented that content should receive a heavier weighting in the grade so weaker students are encouraged to challenge themselves.
Read more →This three-page handout gives guidance for designing a mathematics presentation based on the needs of the audience. For example, strategies are provided for giving the audience reminders when they may wish they could look back to an earlier part of the presentation, giving the audience time to think when they may wish they could slow the presentation, and telling the audience what’s coming when they may wish they could fast-forward to see why you’re doing what you’re doing. Advice addresses both how to give a research talk and how to give a class lecture.
Read more →This brief handout provides sound advice for the process of preparing a presentation. From Olivier Bernardi’s Undergraduate Seminar in Discrete Mathematics.
Read more →The most advanced in a sequence of LaTeX exercises, this homework asks students to use LaTeX to create presentation slides that include an image with LaTeX labels. From MIT’s communication-intensive offering of Real Analysis.
Read more →