Multimodal presentations were given by students in English 102 classes to inform their classmates on topics individually chosen for their respective research papers. 

Research papers were written before the presentations, and it was a six-week-long unit for students to work on. The presentations were inspired by the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) Talk format.

“My topic was about how card games can affect your cognitive ability,” senior Renzo Omolon said. “My TED Talk went amazing. I hit all my lines.
I had a teleprompter right in front of me, but I made sure to keep up with the pace and have good eye contact with the crowd and also project my voice so everyone can hear me.”

The assignment was designed to fit Nevada State University standards about multimodality, which is having multiple literacies of a topic expressed in different formats.

“I look for opportunities in the semester where students can transform their work from one format to the other, which then allows them to address that question on their final exam,” English 102 teacher Amy Lutz said. “I want students to feel comfortable speaking in front of a group.”

The presentations differ from typical formats and students are encouraged to avoid slideshows. 

“I felt very supported during the presentation,” Omolon said. “Especially since afterwards I got a round of applause… I think I’ve always had somewhat decent public speaking skills. It’s just that sometimes I’m on a script,  but I think it helps if I have more experience talking in front of a crowd more.”

Students were given a two-minute time limit to give their presentations and those who presented on the first day had 45 minutes to prepare. 

“Only having 45 minutes was a lot for me and I felt like we had a lot of time to prepare,” senior Nadia Baldwin said. “Still, even when I’m in a large class and I’m presenting, I still get choked up and stutter and stuff. I feel like it helps and
I wish that we had more of these going up and talking presentations, because I feel like that helps. But I was really confident in what I was saying because my topic was very interesting to me and my topic was the positives and challenges in the neonatal intensive care unit for nurses.”

In addition to getting to share their topics with the class, students were also able to learn about what their classmates had been researching. 

“Overall, I did learn a vast array of topics, which was pretty cool,” Omolon said. “I personally don’t really reach out to find different topics like this and I usually stay in my own bubble. But seeing how many people’s interests and what culminated to make their own topic and research paper was pretty fascinating to see.”