I’m going to preface this by stating that I’m probably going to upset some of my friends!
The amount of time I have wasted sitting through trashy, nearly worthless student presentations is unacceptable. Sometimes student presentations would literally crossover in to the following weeks’ classes because most of the instructors almost all of the time let students “BS” for as long as the students want. One time, a student rambled on for over a half hour! That thirty minutes cost each student observing the presentation about $15!
A whole bunch of classes featured student presentations. It was something you were pretty much guaranteed to sit through at least once a quarter.
(Students are encouraged to take a seat while giving presentations, just like most of the instructors)
When I say bad, I mean bad. From students literally just reading enough information for a research paper off slides to students taking extra time to figure out how to run Powerpoint and/or their presentation, there was no end to the torture.
I think this was the worst scenario that was played over and over again:
*Presenting Student reads from slide*
“The civil war ended in 1865. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated soon after.”
*Presenting Student turns to class*
“Basically, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated after the civil war ended in 1865.”
Complete “BS” that was accepted by the instructors.
The worst (and this was from both students and instructors) was when they would insert Youtube links in the presentation. This is bad because:
1. You need an internet connection. What happens if the internet dumps out for a bit? The student would blame it on the internet and not his/her own poor preparation.
2. Ads. Holy balls was it ever annoying when someone would link a Youtube video and a Chili’s commercial would play. Took my mind off the presentation, made me hungry, and the instructor probably didn’t take points off for it.
3. It makes the presentation look trashy. If a word was linked, it looked OK (6 out of 10), but a giant Youtube web address looks trashy (-20 out of 10).
4. What if the link is broken and/or the video is down?
The vast majority of student presenters also didn’t go to class early to prepare their presentation. I’ve had to sit through way too many students having to log in to their Netflix, website, download their Powerpoint, etc. during the presentation, wasting my time and the class’s time.
For an art school, the design of the presentations were often very generic. Templates were used often, which is fine, I just figured there would be more creativity at an art school. The Powerpoints that were just words made me want to hurt myself.
Perhaps the worst aspect of it is the fact that the vast majority of the students didn’t know their material. Not only did students read off slides, they sometimes would read directly from a sheet of paper. Sometimes you could check the date of the presentation file and it would be made the night before/morning of class.
In the end, why are students teaching material? For $120 a class period, I want someone who knows what they are teaching, not someone who just learned about it last night.
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