Inspiring Student Engagement through Two-Minute Follies

Short, in-class, student presentations are an effective way to inspire student engagement while simultaneously improving communication skills. As part of three different civil engineering courses including infrastructure, structures, and sustainability at West Point and Mississippi State, the authors have introduced a student presentation concept dubbed “Two-Minute Follies.” This paper discusses and demonstrates with supporting data that Two-Minute Follies are simple to execute, consume a small amount of time, and engage students more directly in their own education while at the same time building the student’s presentation confidence and style. By engaging the student in a direct way that provides an opportunity to share with their peers, the student is encouraged to progress in Bloom’s Taxonomy. The student also builds skills that are necessary for life-long learning, a traditionally difficult skill set for undergraduates to fully embody. The concept is to assign a two-minute student presentation which will open each class session. Creativity is encouraged, but the timing is rigidly enforced. PowerPoint or other media content is tightly constrained such that the two minutes are focused on the student’s presentation skills and the topic at hand rather than the media employed. Direct observation, course-end feedback by students, and external observation by educators not in the course all indicate that the technique works very well. Specifically, the benefits demonstrated include: Allowing students to investigate a topic of their choice increases their engagement with the material Student presentations considerably enrich the educational experience by introducing topics that students are excited about and which would otherwise be absent from the course Observing fellow students directly engage course-related material encourages life-long learning through peer modeling Students develop essential summarizing and presentation skills Very little instructional time is lost if executed in a disciplined way The authors discuss the details of the Two-Minute Follies technique and its measured benefits as well as provide support for employing this assignment in a variety of courses. P ge 24762.2