This This year, by the time most students arrive at my classroom they have already completed at least one full year of their university education. More often than not, many of them are well on their way to graduating. Still, it puzzles me that few of them feel comfortable with presenting, even the ones who write well and speak intelligently in class.

Now I know that it is natural to be nervous when getting up in front of people to talk. More so when someone is judging you on what you say and how well you say it. The blank stare of one's classmates does little to help. Added to that the fact that, for many of my students, the material they are trying to present is both new and outside of their field.

However, the problem I am really left with is not that students are nervous but that they have forgotten the point of presentations. In fact, it almost seems that the point of presentations has become assumed more than stated even by members of the teaching faculty. As a TA it seems that over the better part of a decade I have sat through dozens of student presentations that meet the expectations as set out in the syllabus but just lack any real substance or lasting impact. I am not advocating flash and dazzle in place of rigor and theory, rather, I am questioning if we have forgotten why we ask students to present in front of their peers.

Certainly, it stands to reason that speaking intelligently in a formal manner is a skill to be learned and perfected with practice. But is that the reason that students are asked to present these days? I used to think so but now I am not sure.

When I designed the foundations component of a course I delivered last summer rather than building in a traditional presentation, I decided to call it a 'facilitated discussion'. The idea of facilitation brings back the one element that I find most lacking in student presentations; interactivity. While I recognize that the point of a presentation is not always for the whole class to participate, it makes pedagogical sense that more than just the presenters should get something out of student presentations. So my approach to preparing students to deliver presentations in a tutorial setting builds on this idea that presentations are a chance for everyone to learn something.

What I did this year to make sure that everyone learns something was to start my foundations skills unit on presentations weeks before the first presentation was slated to take place. I gave my class an analogy to help them understand how to become good presenters. In this analogy I used the advice that everyone gives to aspiring writers. The best writers read a lot. This means that the best presenters observe and participate in a lot of presentations.

At first, they wondered if I expected them to attend other classes and wait for presentations in hopes of finding clues. Instead, I encouraged them to widen their idea of where to look. I suggested that they think about lectures, workplace trainings, instructional videos (even exercise tapes), anything that would open their eyes to how other people convey information by speaking to an audience. I asked them, in particular, to listen for pace, word choices, idea structure and argumentation; to look for technical tools (PowerPoint, chalk, overheads). More importantly, I asked them to think about how or if they were learning while the presentations they were watching unfolded.

Many students were able to speak about presentation styles and tools. But it is the latter area, the internal meta-analysis with which most students had trouble. Asking students to consider themselves as learners in partnership with an instructor, it seemed, shifted their vision of the learning process. After this process of observation, many students were able to identify areas in which specific elements of the presentations they experienced worked or were less successful. Most were able to take this learning and roll it forward into an action plan for their own presentations.

The next phase in this process involved making more obvious the triad of considerations involved in planning a presentation. These are content, form (method of delivery), and audience. Once students knew what helped them learn as members of an audience, they could more easily recognize the relationship between the presentation form and presentation content. Often, they suggested, while planning a presentation they would spend more time concerned with coming up with enough information, or just the right slides or activities that they forgot about their audience. Instead, I told them to consider each area equally, which most of them have done quite successfully.

The next phase in this process takes place as the presentations occur. During presentations I often find myself biting my tongue so as not to take over accidentally. Offering answers or suggestions to 'help' students through awkward moments in their presentations is something that is easy to do. This, of course, does not help students learn the fine art of assessing if they have met the challenge of knowing their material enough to adapt it on the fly to meet the needs of their audience.

The final step is a class debrief. At the end of each presentation, after thanking the presenters (which is something that is not to be underestimated), I open the floor to the class asking for constructive comments; a meta-analysis of the presentation. If you do this, you will be surprised how many more people will discuss the mechanics of the presentation and link these to elements of the content. After the general tender from the class, I highlight specific elements of the presentation that worked and did not work. I ask the class to come up with solutions, consider where changes could be made, offer an action plan for the next presenters.

Nearing the end of this course, ten presentations down and two to go, I feel refreshed by the insights my class has breathed into this element of the course. This year, using this process, my students' presentations have extended the course content and helped me recognize how presentations can be about more than just the material.