Evaluation of Student Presentations

Cassie Wood and Vanessa Chastain

Their experiment was on whether or not the seawall affected seagrass growth in the Sarasota Bay. They provided a roadmap and captured my interest by presenting a hypothesis that may not have been true if the experiment had been done earlier in the life of the seawall. The content was well organized and easy to understand; however, Vanessa did stumble over her words a bit. The conclusions directly related to the topic, and they even provide a possible reason for why their hypothesis was correct. Overall the presentation was well organized and the presenters did a decent job, although eye contact was not as high as it could have been. They seemed to share the workload, each saying approximately equal amounts. A bibliography was included at the end.

Rachel Perry, Llyswen Berna, and Dan Monhollon

This experiment was on the biodiversity of leaf litter. The presentation had a lot of information, but did not seem to include any unnecessary details. The three presenters shared information equally, although the girls seemed to do more talking than Dan. It could just be that Dan talked more quietly than Llyswen and Rachel. It was clear that they had done background research because they knew what pH the soil should be and they knew that oak litter would be more moist than pine litter. They did a good job explaining how the Berlese funnel worked and gave logical reasons for the results they found. The presentation flowed well and the inclusion of the outlier was nice, but made their presentation a little bit longer than it should have been. None of the presenters had any mannerisms that I found distracting. Once more these presenters presented about equal amounts of information. A bibliography was included at the end.

Olivia Brockmeier, Katie Scussel, Sean Binninger, and Stephen Leatherman

This group discussed the invasive species of two different restored areas on campus. As hypothesized, there were fewer invasives on the recently restored site compared to the site restored about ten years ago. The reasoning they presented for this made sense, and they noted that they were unable to identify all species and that the newly restored site may be too young to have recognizable invasive species. They had done background research by asking knowledgeable staff about what they should expect to see in these two sites, and by using the Internet. Each person had a section to present, and the progression was well organized. The presentation could have included more pictures of the plants found and better delineation of which area the species were found in. Everyone presented roughly equal amounts of information, although it seemed that Sean talked a bit longer, however he did go last so this may have been an illusion. There were no distracting mannerisms, but there could have been more eye contact. A bibliography was included at the end and sources were mentioned throughout the presentation.

Oliver Peckham and Madi Verbeek

Oliver and Madi researched bay front trees and how they would be affected by sea level rise on campus. The presentation was well organized, beginning with methods and the number of trees, and progressing to three different scenarios for sea level rise, finishing with a discussion of which trees would be most impacted and how they might fair to submersion. There may have been a little bit too much numerical analysis, but otherwise the information they presented was both relevant and informative, providing listeners with some background information. They shared talking points equally and had a good presenting style, with nice volume and good eye contact. A bibliography was included at the end, giving merit to the conclusions they presented.