Integration of student presentations into advanced classes
At the City College of New York, a project has been started to integrate student presentations into a sequence of three advanced undergraduate classes in engineering. Every undergraduate biomedical engineering student must take two of these three classes. Before classes during the semester begin, students are given a suggested list of narrow topics based on the theoretical material of the class. Each student is required to select one topic for which he or she is expected to read and understand at least four recent journal articles. A three hour lecture on technical speaking, and question and answer sessions is provided for each class. During the final exam, all students present to the class. The audience is partially graded on the questions, while the presenter is graded based on the technical mastery of the material, and the quality of the presentation. So far, initial results are encouraging.
