Individual and Peer Presentation Critique
Staging a presentation about a certain issue or topic cannot be regarded as an easy job. Firstly, it requires the reporter or the reporters—as in the case of a group report, to be knowledgeable enough about the topic or issue of their report that they can already simplify all the complex things in their discussion for the audience to understand.
The saying that suggests that to be able to teach, the lecturer has to have twice the understanding of the topic than the listeners. In presenting topics in any undergraduate course programs where the presentation subjects can be quite technical or worse, complicated, this can present as a difficulty.
As a person who was able to attend to and listen, attentively, to all the group and individual presentations scheduled for this subject, I can say that it is obvious that all group members exerted a significant amount of time, effort, and talent in preparing and presenting their topics. It is just that there are group and individual presentations that turned out better than others for some reason.
My guess is that it all boils down to the way and type of preparation that a group or individual has put into creating and mastering the delivery of their presentation. Nonetheless, I commend and appreciate all the group and individual efforts because if not for such, the collaboration of knowledge that is the delivery of group and individual presentations would not be possible. This critique paper shall serve as my personal reflection for all the work the groups have presented.
As with any other argument, I am going to start with the bad things. I noticed that some of the group members, at least in some of the groups I watched present, did not know what they are presenting or did not participate in any way to the delivery of the presentation. I personally do not know the reason behind such finding.
Maybe the workload was divided based on who would deliver the presentation in front of the audience and who would take care of all the preparations. I think this finding has something to do with style. There were some groups who picked this style—wherein only one or a few members out of the group who delivered the presentation while the others could be seen sitting and doing nothing.
A better style would be equal division of both on and off-stage labor so that everyone, not just the instructors, could see that the presentation was a group effort, and not doubt whether some group members just slacked off.
I would also like to point out my observation that some of the groups simply read the things that were on their presentation. The group assignment given was a presentation and not a reading assignment.
If the audience and the instructors wanted to read, would it not be more sensible to just call the group presentation activity off and instruct everyone to go to the library, read articles, books, and journals so that they can read, more peacefully and efficiently at that.
The point of delivering a presentation is to eliminate the audience’s need to read tons of literatures just to understand a certain topic. Now, if the reporters would just read their presentation, I would not want to call it a presentation but a reading activity. Blunt as this remark may be but this finding is merely based on my observations.
When it comes to technique, I noticed was the lack of entertainment in the presentations. An academic group presentation does not always have to be so formal and or boring. I honestly think that one of the keys in delivering an effective group presentation is to find the perfect balance between an academically-focused and catchy—in some cases, presenters even add a dash of entertainment, presentation. Be too formal and you will surely lose the audience’s attention in just a matter of minutes; be too entertainment-centric and the learning objectives and outcomes may eventually be covered by too much fun.
Now, when it comes to the understandability, depth, and application of the details discussed in the presentation, I can say that majority—which means not all, of the groups did a good job. The main objective here is to give justice to the topic by explaining the most important things to the audience in the simple and most understandable and absorbable way possible.
I commend the initiative of the groups who took the effort to expand their research further than what the subject instructor dictated and expected just to give justice to their topic. However, for the groups who did not, I think they did an average job at best, except for those who merely read their presentations.
The main point of discussing a presentation is to make the audience understand a topic. It does not matter whether you have a deep or extraordinarily high level of mastery of the topic. If you cannot make things simple enough for the audience to understand, that deep and extraordinary level of topic mastery would be nothing but useless. Some of the groups even entertained a few sensible questions after they delivered the presentation which was, for me, a good thing because that was one good way to ensure that the audience understood what they explained.
Critique and Reflection of my Own Presentation
I do not want to be arrogant and believe that our group presentation was the best among all the groups that presented; and in the same manner, I do not want to say that it was perfect. Our presentation, just like that of all the other groups, had loopholes, which I will be more than willing to discuss in this personal reflection of our own presentation.
When it comes to style and technique, I think I did a good job. I kept telling to myself what the rationale of delivering a presentation is and I stuck to that rationale and made sure that I would be able to complete that rationale by means of delivering a presentation. I think I have to be more confident about myself.
When I was in front of the audience presenting, I honestly felt an almost crippling level of tension, not because I did not prepare for the presentation and certainly not because I did not know a thing or two about it. I think I just got nervous that time, which according to our professor, was completely normal.
Nonetheless, I t still think that the presentation would have been better if I was more confident that time. Because I got nervous, I was not able to gather feedback from the audience, and examine their reactions and expressions every time I delivered some key points about the topic.
Secondly, I think the presentation was too shallow, even superficial if you may. I would not be surprised if I will receive a not so high score on presentation applicability because I was not able to relate the problems and main ideas of the presentation into sensible theoretical and real-life problems.
I liked it that I was able to at least give some relevant, albeit shallow, examples to persuade the audience and make them agree with my every point. I could certainly see that they were able to understand what I was saying when I delivered the presentation to them and for me, that is the most important thing. It does not matter whether whatever I said or discussed will lead to assimilation of thoughts; what matters most for me is to be understood.
Nonetheless, I believe that it was a good presentation. We achieved our main goal—to get our message across. In the future, I think it would benefit both the reporters and the audience if a good variety of visual aids, not just texts but also pictures, icons, stories, and other relevant examples would be included in the presentations.
