Team Presentation

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revised 02/15/2012

One of the main projects you will produce for this class is a 50-60-minute team presentation (most teams will have 4 members; one will have 3) on one of the revolutionary books that we will discuss this semester.  The main objective  of your presentation is to introduce the book to the class in terms of the author's biography, the historical/cultural moment out of which the book was produced, and the book's critical reception (when the book was first published and current critics' readings of the book).  Based on your research, you will also give us a synthesis of what issues and topics are significant for studying the book, the ways in which the book is revolutionary, and how the book connects to other books we have read or will read.  The presentation should be formal, but I strongly encourage you to use your creativity to hook your audience and keep our interest.  You can use music, visuals, props, drama, or whatever means you think would be effective and appropriate.

The purpose of this activity is to test how well you can gather information from a variety of sources and synthesize it into an organized, coherent, and engaging presentation. These skills will be particularly useful for those of you planning to attend graduate or professional school, to teach at any level, or to get a job where you will need to independently acquire expertise and inform and engage colleagues.

Here's a breakdown of the four parts:

  1. Biographical Context: Give an overview of the author's life with particular attention to the time around the book's formation and publication.  Avoid simply giving us dates and timelines (though these tools might be helpful in handout form), but gather key anecdotes to create a narrative that will help us understand how the author's lived experience may have influenced the book (i.e., the death of Wordsworth's mother when he was a boy and the many mothers represented in Lyrical Ballads).  Incorporate photographs of the author and important people in the author's life into your presentation (whether with posters or slides).  Provide an annotated bibliography of the biographical sources you use and give us a sense of the biographer's approach (textual, psychoanalytic, cultural, etc.) in each entry.  You might also consider using autobiographies, letters, and memoirs to construct your biography--reading sections of letters or life-writing can be a very effective way to nutshell a point about an author that you want to illustrate.  Limit this part of your presentation to 10-15 minutes.
  2. Historical/Cultural Context: Give us a sense of the historical, political, and cultural events and ideas that influenced the book.  What important ideas and events surround the book and why or how do you think they influenced it?  Don't just consider political events (i.e., the French Revolution's influence on Lyrical Ballads), but also consider cultural ideas and events related to publishing, music, visual art, theater, film, etc. (i.e., increase in periodicals publishing ballads, rise of the middle class, landscape painting, etc. on LB).   Make connections to specific poems in your collection or incidents in your novel.  Don't just list poems and connections but take time to explore/discuss/explain some of the connections and how they influence your interpretations of the works or how the literary works might provide commentaries on the cultural/historical events. Produce an annotated bibliography of at least five historical sources. Limit this part of your presentation to 10-15 minutes.
  3. Critical Context: A) First give us a sense of the book's critical reception at the time of its publication.  Read at least eight book reviews from diverse publications.  Quote from the reviews and synthesize the prevailing attitudes about the book.  Consider who the reviewers are (particularly any relationship with the writer) and pay special attention to her/his rhetoric, values, and criteria for evaluation.  Produce an annotated bibliography of your sources.  B) Then survey more recent critical articles and book chapters on your book (focus mostly on the total book, but with collections you may use some articles on individual poems).  Each person on your team should read three articles/chapters and write a one-page précis (with MLA entry) for each piece.  (At least half of the articles should be from the past fifteen years.) For the presentation, select the most compelling contemporary articles you found, briefly summarize the argument, and then highlight some key points that enriched your understanding of the book, made you think about it in a different way, presented an argument you disagreed with (but that you still found interesting) and argue against it.  For the précis, give a basic summary of each writer's argument and comment on his/her theoretical approach, the quality/helpfulness of the piece, and its most interesting ideas.  Limit this part of your presentation to 20-25 minutes.
  4. Overview: Based on your own readings and the readings of other scholars, present a synthesis of the important issues in the book. Develop the discussion with specific examples, talk about central questions the text seems to ask, examine inconsistencies or gaps in the meaning, explain what ideas/techniques/concepts make your book an important (revolutionary) one.  Spend at least ten minutes on this portion.

Oral Presentation vs. Written Work:

Remember an oral presentation is not a paper.  Nothing is more boring than to be read at for an hour (we've all experienced this torture), so consciously think of ways that your team can deliver the information you've gathered in interesting, informative, and engaging ways. Think back to some of the lessons of Comm 101 and the principles you were taught about oral communication, but talk to others (teachers, classmates, friends) about what makes a presentation effective.  If you use PowerPoint, make sure to use it well--a simple Google search of "effective PowerPoint" will yield a number of web sites that offer you good advice.  You might decided to forgo PowerPoint altogether and use some other visual support (Prezi.com, posters, traditional slide show, video, Google presentation).

As with an effective paper, one of the keys to an effective presentation is planning.  I would like you and your team to give me a 2-page abstract of your presentation ten days before your presentation.  Give me an overview of your presentation's structure, the substantive, central ideas/points you want your audience to understand, specific strategies/techniques you will use to engage your audience, and specific questions you have about delivering the information to your audience.  We will have a group conference to discuss your presentation at least one week before the presentation.

As you all know, a central idea is a basic feature that will give an essay unity and coherence.  For essays you will have a thesis, an arguable assertion.  For the presentation, you may choose to make an argument about your book (have a thesis) or you may decide to have a central idea that you want to express and reinforce.  This central idea will help you avoid producing a presentation that is fragmented and feels piecemeal.  For example, one might argue that Lyrical Ballads is revolutionary because it embodies the radical ideals of the French Revolution, liberty, equality, and fraternity.  One could make connections between Wordsworth's travels in France during the revolution (biographical), show how many of the subjects/characters of the poems resemble figures from the revolution or how the themes of the poems reinforce the ideals, comment on how reactionary critics scolded Wordsworth for the radical ideals he represents, discuss how one 21st-century critic identifies many communitarian moments in the collection and make the connection to fraternity.  Creating this kind of unity will be one of the challenges you'll face, and I'm happy to help you think of ways to create it in your presentation. [Note: you don't have to focus the entire presentation on how revolutionary your book is; you may choose another primary focus.]

Finally, one feature that will elevate the quality of your presentation is teamwork, or esprit de corps.  This doesn't just mean working well together and everyone doing their part.  In fact, simply dividing up the material so that "everyone does his/her own part" will diminish your esprit de corps because your presentation will likely become more like 3 or 4 individual presentations spliced together (this is called the divide and conquer approach).  If you work on different parts together (everybody does some biographical, historical, and critical work), you'll be more likely to create a dialogue and more interaction between members when you do the actual presentation. We'll talk about this piece more in class and as we critique my presentation.

Criteria for Evaluation:

I will grade your presentation on completeness (did you include all the required components), thoroughness (did you have details supported by research?), accuracy (was the information correct?), organization (did the presentation have a logical structure and flow?), coherence (did the presentation make sense?), engagement (was the presentation interesting? Did the group consciously try to capture our attention?), clarity (could we understand the group?), energy (did the group vary its tone and pace? Were they enthusiastic about their presentation?), and esprit de corps (did the teammates work well together? Did they complement one another?).

An A presentation will not just provide all of the required information, but the presenters will have a clear central idea and present their information in a truly engaging and creative way.  The presentation will not just include the presenters talking, but they will have effective visual components to their presentation as well.  The presenters will be masters of the subject, stimulate our interest, and will be able to answer our questions.  An A presentation will balance the information and not give us too much from one area or another.  Each of the teammates will contribute in nearly equal amounts, will not step on each other's toes, and will complement the others' contributions.  Presenters will look well-rehearsed, professional and organized; will speak so that we can hear and understand them; and will have sincere enthusiasm and energy for their project.  An A presentation will have all of the required materials neatly organized in a portfolio.

A B presentation will provide all of the required information, but will not have as creative or engaging of a hook to keep us engaged; the central idea may not be as clear as with an A presentation.  B presenters will know their material but may not have mastered it as completely as A presenters.  B presenters level of engagement will not be as consistent as for an A presentation.  Teamwork will be balanced, but there may be a few moments where teammates step on each other's toes.  The look and feel of professionalism will not be as high for a B presentation, but the group will attempt to create a professional impression and will show evidence of rehearsal.  B presenters will be easy to understand, but they may not have the consistent energy and enthusiasm that an A presentation has.  A B presentation will include all of the required materials, but they may not be as neatly organized.

A C presentation will have all of the required information, but will not have a creative or engaging hook; the central idea will be loose but present.  Basically, the team will deliver all of the information accurately, but team members will not have mastered their material.  The presentation will probably come across as 2 or 3 smaller presentations—the team will not use transitions between points nor will teammates complement each other's ideas.  We will be able to understand the group, but there will be little enthusiasm or energy in the presentation.  The group will not create a professional, organized, completely prepared impression.  The team will include all of the required materials.

Hopefully work below C level will not be an issue, but D and F work will generally be incomplete, carelessly presented, and poorly produced.

Special Notes:

Non-traditional Approaches: I will entertain proposals from teams who wish to use an alternative approach as long as the methodology allows the group to achieve all of the assignment's objectives and requirements.  For example, the members of one team in a past seminar filmed the bulk of their presentation in an effective way.  As you brainstorm about potential formats, try to focus on structures and methods of delivery that are particularly appropriate for the work you chose. 

WRITTEN MATERIALS TO ACCOMPANY PRESENTATION

Annotated Bibliography Guidelines

The annotated bibliographies for your presentation should follow the MLA format.  See a recent edition of The Bedford Handbook or The MLA Style Guide for guidelines for documentation and sample bibliographic entries. Limit yourselves to book chapters and articles from journals, magazines, or anthologies--note that the format will vary depending on the type of journal you use. You should alphabetize each bibliography by the authors’ last names (you will have one package for biography, one for history/culture, and one for contemporaneous book reviews—you'll write longer précis for recent critical articles).  The annotations are simply brief (4-6 sentence) summaries which follow the bibliographical entries.

Précis Description (slightly modified from Craig Watson)

Précis refers to a summary, but especially to a summary of main points made in a presentation or a piece of writing.  After you have found an appropriate article, chapter, or perhaps book, written within the past 20 years, you will read and digest that work of criticism with the idea of presenting concisely the main point or points made by the critic and a succinct summary (1-2 pages) of the writer's development or defense of that point or points.  You will head each précis with an MLA bibliographical entry for the piece and then begin the actual summary.

Having decided what the critic's thesis is, present the critic's thesis at the beginning of your précis:

Example:  In his chapter entitled "Separatism Unleashed," from the book The Puritan Dilemma, Edward Morgan praises the excellent leadership and forbearance of John Winthrop in an account of Winthrop's response to the threat imposed on the Puritan community by Roger Williams's (extreme) visionary separatism.

Notice here that the critic (Morgan) and the source (in this case, chapter title and book title) are introduced immediately; also notice that Morgan's thesis (big idea) in the chapter is summarized.

Next, move to a summary of the critic's main points and key illustrations:

Example:  "According to Morgan, Williams's positions were threatening to Puritan community.  Williams advocated extreme separatism that was impractical and disruptive.   Morgan points out that Williams insisted that . . . (illustrations).  Morgan claims that conflict came to a crisis in Williams's proclamations against the Church of England . . . .  According to Morgan, Winthrop's responses throughout the conflict were measured, humane, and just, given Winthrop's assigned duty and larger responsibility to the community.  For instance . . . ."(illustrations)".

Notice here that you (the précis writer) are reporting what Morgan (the critic) says.  This is your stance ("Morgan argues . . . ," "Morgan concludes . . . ," etc.)

Finally, you should provide a concluding statement or paragraph.  Here you gather together the essential points you have reported.  This closing corresponds to a conclusion in a thesis-focused essay where you are asked to restate and elaborate the introduction's thesis, provide an important final quotation, and review (see again) the critic's argument.

Example: Throughout his argument Morgan portrays John Winthrop as a leader responding to real threats to the Puritan "model of Christian charity@ that Winthrop saw as the foundation for creating an earthly version of the "celestial city.

Writing a précis requires you to synthesize other people's ideas in a short, well-ordered report that bears some resemblance to a thesis-focused essay.  The difference is that the thesis and development of an insight or assertion are not your inventions but someone else's.  You report on what that critic had to say. 

Summary of Written Materials (click for sample entries)

Electronic Copies: Have one person in your group email ALL of the electronic copies to me by midnight on the due date.  Make sure there are no spaces in the file titles and that the first word is the name of your author (i.e., Wordsworth) and that the rest of it is fairly descriptive of what’s in the file (i.e., WordsworthCultHistBib, WordsworthReviewsBib, WordsworthHaleMothersPrecis).

Self/Group Evaluation

Each team member needs to complete a confidential self/group evaluation form.  The forms are due to me the class meeting after you have made your presentation.


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