Team-Based Class Presentations and Seminar Facilitation

Students will be asked to work in teams (comprised of roughly three students each) twice over the course of the term: once to prepare an oral presentation and PowerPoint deck to brief the class on the assigned readings and topic for that particular date and once to facilitate one of the class seminars. In both cases, grades will be assigned to the team on the basis of both the written component (e.g PowerPoint presentation, seminar notes) and the oral presentation and oral seminar leadership.

Reading Briefs

The reading briefs will be expected to outline the most important issues raised by a particular topic, outline how those issues fit with the broader set of class discussions and readings to date, and identify the most important topics for class/lecture discussion. Briefs will be presented in class in the form of a PowerPoint deck which will be available to other students after the class.

While the briefing and decks will be expected to draw on the readings for that topic, it is expected that all students will already have done the relevant assigned readings so the briefings are expected to go beyond the assigned readings in terms of the material covered as well as the readings integrated into the discussion. In most cases, the instructor will provide a set of resource readings in addition to the required course readings to provide a starting point for the briefing team to develop their brief.

The presentation of the brief and deck will take no more than 20 minutes plus an additional ten minutes allowed for questions and discussion.

Briefing teams are required to provide the instructor with summary briefing notes and an outline of the briefing deck (e.g. pictures, etc. are not required) in electronic format by 5:00 pm on the Wendesday prior to their assigned briefing date (for teams presenting on Monday) or 5:00 pm on the Friday prior to their assigned briefing date (for teams presenting on Wednesday.) Following the class presentation (and instructor suggestions), the final PowerPoint presentation will be posted on UW-ACE.

Seminar Leadership Teams

The class will be divided into two for each seminar date with each seminar lasting 40 minutes. For each of the two groups on a given seminar date, a seminar leadership team of three people will be assigned. Seminar leadership teams are expected to provide a one page (maximum) overview of the readings, lectures and course discussions which they feel are most relevant to the assigned topic. While broad topic areas are provided in the syllabus, the seminar leadership team may consult with the instructor to devise a more specific overarching seminar question. The seminar overview should include a list of more specific questions focused on the most important issues raised by the broader question for the class to address over the course of the seminar. The leadership team will be expected to facilitate discussion over the course of the seminar while stimulating discussion among the remaining students.

The written seminar overview will be due at 5:00 two days prior to the seminar and will be posted on UW-ACE.

Assignment of Dates

At the beginning of the course, students will be asked to identify their top choices in terms of topics and will be assigned to teams by the instructor depending on topic preference and even distribution of students across topics.