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Report on Creating a Web Archive of Student Presentations

Abstract

Each student gave two formal 15 minute presentations during the semester that were structured similar to presentations at mathematics conferences. They turned in copies of their transparencies (some in electronic form) that I converted to web documents.



Pedagogical Goals

The first student presentation in a course quite often sets the standard (either high or low) for the rest of the students. I would like to build a culture of high quality presentations in 300 level mathematics courses with the goal of having more students give talks at undergraduate mathematics conferences. One challenge is to maintain the momentum from one semester to another, especially if there is no overlap in the students enrolled in the courses.

Strategy

My proposal is to build an electronic archive on the web consisting of the abstracts and slides used by the students in their two talks in Abstract Algebra this spring. There are obvious benefits: 1. I hope the first talks this semester will be of a high quality since the students will know that their materials will be visible to the world on the web. 2. In future semesters, the department can point students to the archive to show the expectations for their presentations and the level of preparation that is necessary. At mathematics conferences, almost all talks are given using transparencies on an overhead projector. While some students may create electronic versions of their transparencies, there will be diagrams and notation that are more easily drawn by hand. As a result, I anticipate that I will scan most of the transparencies.

Assessment

There was no formal assessment, but I was very surprised with the high level of most of the first round of talks. I would like to think that a large part of this was the knowledge that their presentations would be visible to the world through the archive. It was also very encouraging to me that three of the students subsequently gave versions of their talks at the Sixth Annual Hudson River Undergraduate Mathematics Conference at Sienna College on April 18. I expect to get some meaningful feedback this fall from my upper division Geometry course while they are preparing for their presentations. Now that I have been through the process myself, I believe I can give the students very explicit instructions for scanning their transparencies, and I feel comfortable requiring the students to turn in an electronic copy of their transparencies as part of their presentations. This project gave me the motivation to start the electronic archive, and I now feel confident that it will continue to grow with a much smaller time commitment on my part. G. Dissemination There will be no dissemination other than making the archive available on the web at http://www2.wheatonma.edu/academic/academicdept/MathCS/faculty/tratliff/stud enttalks/home.html and linking to it from both the MathCS Department page and my homepage.

Last updated on 12/06/00;
Send questions about this page to: Thomas Ratliffe
or contact Wheaton College.