Nellie Ruby

Chair of Art and Art History

Phase 1/ presentation 1: 

What is climate change, how does it specifically affect you? 

Each of 7 students were asked to work individually on this project, and to summarize the stand-out information they learned, and present to the class with context and each student’s specific focus. 

Point: everyone gets involved and engaged in research, and teaches their peers through their presentations. To promote engagement, I asked them to someone make it personal, so that the work became meaningful to them, and drove both their research and (hopefully) their longtime interest in the topic. 

Phase 2/presentation 2: 

Present a problem and a possible (small/local) project that would work toward a solution. 

Point: in this project students were able to work with a partner or individually–if someone’s original presentation was similar to another, or their approach, or their style, students might want to double up. With the focus on the solution, alongside personal impact, I thought students might be more driven to engage in meaningful work. This work culminated in a second presentation, with a short contextualization and focus on their proposal for rolling out a solution. 

Students were asked to critique and support each other’s work, and I gave feedback as well, both in terms of their contextualizing essential initial information, their idea, and the manner of presentation. 

Phase 3/presentation 3 

After critique: a second version of the presentation. 

I had initially designed the second presentation to be received by professionals (Leah Owenby for presentation style and Susan Kidd and Emma Dufresne for sustainability response)