Proposal presentations

Most of today was spent with a couple of colleagues at one of our lecture halls listening to students present proposals for their final projects. The main purpose of these presentations held at the beginning of each school term is for us to assess whether each student's proposed project is worth implementing as a final project.

As there are around a hundred students enrolled in our undergraduate degree program in each year and only a handful of instructors who can serve as project supervisors, this is a long and tedious process. We instructors are practically forced to sit nearly all day scanning written proposals for their main points and watching slide presentations while listening to the students explain what they plan to do.

The presentations provide one of a few opportunities for me to pick out students whom we might tap to join the teaching staff when they graduate. I'm usually pleasantly surprised to find some students who can prepare good slide presentations and explain concepts clearly in straight Filipino or English--a rarity these days when most people use a shockingly ridiculous mix of both languages.

On the other hand, I'm appalled that most are still unable to make a decent presentation. Instead of including just key words or phrases in their slides, they write entire paragraphs--often verbatim from their written proposals!--which they tend to read off the slide rather than expound on using their own words. (There was one student who did have phrases only on her slides but read right off her written proposal.) I sometimes wonder if they were ever taught the proper way to present a seminar in the required undergraduate seminar course which they were supposed to have taken last school term.

This disappointment together with the fact that listening to proposal presentations hours on end can be very wearying--we had lunch almost an hour late today--is what I don't like about this part of being a project supervisor in particular.

Nevertheless I find the exercise very enlightening and gratifying at the same time especially when students surprise me by coming up very much on their own with unique and unusual topics that I most probably would never have thought of.