WHEN the use of the power point was quite new, I assigned “reporters” like most lecturers did. In the reporting method, students utilize the power point for their presentation. They are each assigned a topic and each takes his/her turn to stand before the class and present his/her slides. As technology communications available to us became more developed, and surfing the web became a past time, I began to be uneasy using this method. Uneasy because clearly the slides were mere power point versions of word. Uneasy because I was unsure whether some significant learning takes place while students prepared slides for their reports. Usually, the student reporter is armed with a usb, clicks his/her laptop to project on the screen the “masterpiece” prepared for the session. (A blank wall in other classrooms serves as a screen as well.) Complete sentences fill up the slides which the reporter read to the class. Like I wrote in a previous column, I had the students undergo a session on the proper way of preparing slides such as translating the ideas in a list format or what one may call listing them “bullet” form. My thinking was that some learning, some grey cells would be set to active mode since outlining will do away with much of the “cut and paste” and where we lecturers would be assured that indeed some learning would take place “between the ears.” However this kind of slide preparation did not seem to ensure maximizing learning because the presentors became more adept in the use of the power point application by making use of the provision for notes below each slide which served as their report. Others relied on a “codigo” – a textual rendition on hard copy on word of the power point presentation which could easily be again a cut and paste from a source or sources. I also noticed that most presentors were nervous standing alone amidst a big class. You would of course agree with me that usually while a presentor dishes out the prepared slides, not all class members are necessarily concentrating on the on-going presentation. Those assigned for the same session are busy preparing for their own turns; still one or two others who may have been assigned in later sessions would have the temerity though unostentatiously to operate their own “machines” (ipod or laptops), to visit their fb’s, twitter or whatever social media they are fond of. Sometimes one is drawn to think that either the teacher or subject matter is lousy or that the graduate students (who these days are just over their baccalaureate, hence in their early twenties with a sprinkling of thirties and forties) are merely passing their time before doing some serious rite of passage to masters-hood.

The next trimester, having doctoral level classes to conduct, I was led to introduce the symposium format for reporting. This mode is popular in international fora. The group or panel consists of four or five members. Two panels could be assigned for a class session. So

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