Create a brief oral presentation. Written and oral communication share many of the same skills: focusing on a topic, creating an assertion, developing and organizing information. Additionally, presenting information orally heightens awareness of some communication skills, such as engaging with an audience, using visuals to enhance your message, and speaking. It's important to learn what makes a good presentation, since presentation and writing skills are so intertwined. The purpose of this assignment is to apply college writing skills in a different way. (This assignment may be modified as needed – please consult with the instructor.)
Basic Requirements
- No more than 2 minutes, 7-8 slides
- Presentations must have a thesis/focus sentence and then 3-5 supporting points
- Presentations must include both visuals and your own spoken narration
- Submit your script with your presentation
How to Proceed
- Write a script for your presentation.
- Choose appropriate visuals for the script.
- Create and record the presentation.
- When you present, even though you have a script, please do not read directly, as this often sounds too formal or stilted. Use your script for your talking points.
Presentation Topics
You can choose one of two different topics for your oral presentation:
- Base the presentation on the topic of one of the essays you did for this class, so that you are presenting your essay's main ideas in a different way, using a different medium - OR -
- Base the presentation on the reflection assignments that you did for this class and present on your major areas of knowledge gained, reflecting on your strongest and weakest areas and what you can do to develop further as a writer
Presentation Formats
You can use any presentation format that includes both visual and audio and can be uploaded and viewed in the course. If you want to show yourself speaking and using visuals, that's o.k., although please know that only relevant images and your voice are required.
A narrated PowerPoint is the simplest technology, and there is reading about PowerPoint in this module's Reading section. For different formats, please check with our technical support to see if a format is compatible with the course.
Using Visuals
Make sure to use visuals from free, Creative Commons sources so that you are using visuals ethically. One useful site is Pixabay, which offers thousands of Creative Commons visuals on thousands of subjects. Include alternative text on your visuals for accessibility purposes. For more information visit Write Effective Alternative Text.
Narration
Make sure to narrate when you are in a quiet environment, to eliminate background noise. Note - you will need to download the desktop version of PowerPoint in order to add narration to your slides.
Consult the Oral Presentation Rubric to help you create your oral presentation.
AI Use
It's o.k. to use AI to summarize the main points of one of your essays or of your reflection, with the understanding that:
- you only use AI to extract main points in a summary so you can create your own presentation
- AI isonly a tool to help you get started with your presentation; your presentation will need to be personalized and substantially different from what AI generates
- you submit your AI prompt/s and log/s along with your idea draft
Consult the Artificial Intelligence Tool Information in the Course Information section as needed.
Note that although there are AI tools that create presentations, they do not necessarily produce good products. I used one and input the "Benefits of GMOs" outline section that AI produced and that you read earlier in the course. The presentation included many items that made it very weak, such as:
- too many words - using whole sentences when phrases would suffice
- lack of unity - it did not stay focused on benefits of GMOs, but brought in extraneous information such as the history of GMO development
- readability - small font, lack of images on many slides that were text-heavy
- inappropriate images - e.g., an image of people protesting GMOs on a slide that dealt with enhanced nutrition being a benefit of GMOs
- lack of citation
Submit
Presentation and Script