Presenting the OBTC Way

(Especially for first time presenters)

Soon it will be your time to bring to life what you have written and prepared to present in your session at OBTC 2011. The OBTC way of presenting is different from how you would use your time at a research conference. We are teachers teaching teachers.

Expect and allow time and reason for lots of interaction.  Veteran OBTC’ers want to be engaged for your benefit, as well as theirs.  You may have the goal of leaving the session with a head buzzing with notions of how you will use this mutually enriching experience to fuel and advance your idea into a publication or class. Indeed in a good session, both presenter and some of the audience will go back home ready to re-design for the next teaching application.

Presenting at OBTC is more than the text of your paper or words on PowerPoint slides.  It is thinking about “ learning” not just “teaching”. Take some risks.

Step away from those slides.  Shorten those lecture notes to a paragraph or two, and turn us all into learners.  Give us things to do, puzzles to solve, leave us with new questions wonderfully impossible to answer.  Your gift to your audience is an opportunity to partake of your teaching as would your most avid and restive students.

Remember, the OBTC Way, for veterans and first-timers alike, is to be enthusiastic and have fun.