Lecture by Student Presentations: Violation of Student Rights?

"My tuition is paying for Professor/Instructor-led lectures NOT Student presentations!"

We did several student presentations in school and everytime I heard this same statement. Who did it come from? The lazy students who didn't want to do anything extra outside of the classroom.

I think presentations are a good teaching/learning tool. It gives the student extra practice with "patient" teaching outside of clinicals and it gives the instructor a method to evaluate competence with patient teaching. If the instructor feels the information presented is incomplete or inaccurate, it's not difficult to step in or have a mini follow-up lecture to clarify points.

By no means do I feel any rights are violated by student-facilitated lectures. Again, the only ones I heard complaining were the ones who didn't want to do anything extra outside of the classroom.

I think it is perfectly appropriate to include student presentations. However, like everything else in life, a lot depends on how those presentations are included. For example:

1. The learning objectives to justify why the students must present should be incorporated into the course objectives so that students know WHY they are doing them -- and the reasons should not focus on the provision of education to their classmates. The objectives should focus on things like (a) locating information (b) organizing and prioritizing information (c) communicating health information to others, etc. The students should understand that skills they practice while preparing and presenting the material are valuable to their future careers. They should not feel that they are doing it because the instructor is too lazy to teach the class.

2. The instructor should not rely on the students to do most of the teaching. The instructor should share his/her expertise with the students in a way that the students recognize as "teaching." Students have a valid point when the entire class consists of ONLY student presentations.

3. Students should be provided with clear expectations so that they know what is expected of them -- and be guided toward appropriate resources to use for the project. It is the instructor's job to "teach" them how to do a good presentation. How many questions do we get here on allnurses from students assigned to do a paper or presentation who claims they do not understand their assignment and/or have no idea as to where to go for resources? That's bad teaching.

Do you see what I am getting at? There is an underlying theme here. Some instructors assign papers and/or class presentations having done very little teacher prep in the planning of that assignment -- leaving the students to feel inadequately supported and not understanding the rationale for having to do the assignment. A good teacher does a good job of preparing the students for the assignment and supporting them so that the students can see the benefit of the activity. Students are much more likely to learn something when they understand what they are supposed to learn and are given the help they need to learn it.

Like a lot of things ... I've seen it doen well and I've seen it done badly. Sometimes, the students are right, but not always.

What level are these students? I've observed that lower-division students are much more wedded to the passive lecture format than upper-division students. As llg stated, point out the objectives of the assignment so these students can see why it is useful to them and their classmates. What we educators think is obvious is not always so.

I had an instructor that broke the class into 6 groups of 5 and we had to do presentations for every class meeting! She never gave us any feedback or direction on what she wanted out of the presentation. She would scream and belittle us as our groups stood at the front of the classroom about how poor our research was and would call people stupid and say we were wasting her time. After a few weeks of this we complained to the administration but nothing was really done about it. Students would be ill on presentation day and more than once a student broke out in tears. She never spent a single minute lecturing and we had to rely on questions from the class as our feedback. I learned very little in orientation to nursing as a result of this because I was solely focused on preparing my presentations so that I wouldn't be yelled at or called stupid. I don't recall reading anything that had to do with any other group's presentations. It was so bad that as a class we joined together and would pre-write the questions we wanted the class to ask and plant them in the "audience" so that no one would have to take the chance of someone asking them something they didn't know and end up being embarrassed.

Yeah nursing school was great (sarcasm)....I so miss it now that it's over.

I meant to ask whether they were freshmen/sophomore or junior/senior students, assuming you teach in a 4-year program.

I concur with what llg has posted. If placed in the correct context, student presentations can be very helpful. I ask them to present a clinical case of a pt with the diagnosis we are covering, to help put a "face" on the condition. For example, if we are studying CHF, and John Doe had a pt with CHF last week, I will ask him to present (in 5 minutes or less) the de-identified facts about his pt, and how his pt compared with what he expected in terms of goals, priorities of care, response to therapy, etc.

The students in my class love this, as it makes abstract concepts much more concrete. There is a big difference between me saying "This can result in edema" and a student saying "My pt was so edematous on admission that he had a huge line where his socks were!" or describing how urine output increased after lasix and his pt was able to breathe more easily.

I think the idea that knowledge is only conveyed by the professor is very dangerous. If this were the case, this means that my students will stop learning the second they are out of my presence. I don't let them take the easy way out. They work hard, and the huge majority are grateful for tough but fair standards, but there are always a small few who resent having to work for their education.