|
View the H-Public Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in H-Public's October 2009 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in H-Public's October 2009 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the H-Public home page.
1) Thanks Darlene for raising a great issue; I will be saving her email to use in support of why I need a budget for class projects and final presentations! In all seriousness, I think her query punctuates the perennial need to discuss how we teach concern for audience and accessible communication. One thing we do in our program is to undertake in every public history methodology class a project on behalf of a community partner and then have a semester/project concluding "ceremony, presentation, celebration" in which the students share the results of their work with representatives of the partnering organization, and supportive faculty & administrators from the Uni community. We have used posters, powerpoints, and moviemaker films, but dialogue, opinion sharing, and future plans always come up. While some students take the "presentational lead"-- all contribute and help shape the presentation's structure, format, and success. In final reflections, the students invariably reference the final presentation experience as the fruition of their study of audience and accessibility. The community partners are gratified that something they thought only "reached" them elicited excitement and dedication from students--this is usually when it hits them that they have done something for the students and not just the other way round. The other professors and administrators who come to the presentation are usually a bit surprised at how engaged and engaging the students' presentations are. The reaction of the non-historians is the best--they come expecting to be bored and are so shocked that they are not, that can't help but say so. Rebecca "Becky" Bailey, PhD Director, Public History Program History & Geography Department 407 Landrum Academic Center Northern Kentucky University Highland Heights, Kentucky 41099 (859) 572-5176 http://publichistory.nku.edu -----Original Message----- I am curious about what professors of public history do to train their students to develop good presentation skills, an essential ingredient of success in public history. I just attended a conference where public history students presented papers in the academic format, reading them before the assembled audience, who were interested in history but had little knowledge of the subjects being presented. It reminded me again how the academic format -- reading papers before the assembled colleagues-- is inappropriate for public history presentations, where the audience to whom one presents usually knows more (or at least are convinced they do) about the subject than the public historian does, where the audience is usually not only vested in the subject matter, but paying the bills for its investigation and presentation. What you, the public historian, know can not be as important under the circumstances as how you use what you do know, how you present it to the stake holders, and how adept you are at making a case for them to use you and your perspectives for their project, to follow your proposals for their project, and/or to adopt your recommendations for policy change and development. Not one of the student papers I heard would have gotten to first base in any stake-holder conversations. Public history, dare we remind ourselves, does not occur in academic settings. So how are students getting training for this important non-academic skill set? Darlene Roth, Ph.D. 1620 Longbranch Avenue Grover Beach, CA 93433 darlene@darleneroth.com ------------ 2) Colleagues, The query of how public history programs train students in presentation skills brings up several interesting issues. In direct course work at Loyola University we do not train students in presentation over and above instructing them in the basic principles of interpretation. Those principles are established through reading basic texts and observation during field trips. We not train our public history students nor our regular graduate students in how to make professional presentations. Loyola does sponsor an annual graduate student conference that has drawn significant national participation which affords our students (public and traditional) a chance to hone their presentation skills. Hopefully one thing they learn is that reading a paper is an ineffective way to present your ideas in either an academic or public form. What I found interesting about Darlene Roth's query, however, was her complaint that public history students were following the standard academic model of reading papers. This seemed inappropriate to Darlene, yet strangely we at the National Council on Public History have been following that same model--by and large--since we first started having conferences in 1980. I think it might be time for NCPH move more determinedly toward a model more in line with the practice of public history. Certainly, NCPH in recent years has expanded the poster session beyond what would be seen at an AHA or OAH meeting and this is certainly appropriate to who we are. At Loyola our graduate students recently organized a workshop to train students how to make a conference poster and how to best present it. The Louisville Program Committee I think made a positive contribution to a more inclusive conference program through the creation of a series of Working Groups, a policy that has been followed in Providence and Portland. Bringing interested parties together to share experience and concerns creates a more interactive experience. These are important steps that take us away from the didactic academic model. Maybe there are further steps we can take in this direction. Ted Karamanski Director, Public History Program Loyola University Chicago ----------- 3) Hey Darlene! What sort of meeting was it? We try to train our students to communicate to the audience at issue. They will look academic at an academic meeting but be much more businesslike in a scoping meeting. Dealing with clients is different from dealing with professors and we try to help them learn the vocabularies as well as the performance skills to shine in both venues. I have to say, it is sure different from when you and I sat next to each other in grad school and nobody ever talked about audiences. Nobody, as you will remember, even talked about the west. Best, Jann Jannelle Warren-Findley Associate Professor and Interim Director, Graduate Program in Public History Department of History Arizona State University Tempe, AZ 85287-4302 480-965-5264 atjwf@ASU.EDU -- H-Public To post to the list: H-PUBLIC@h-net.msu.edu Home page: www.h-net.org/~public sponsored by the National Council on Public History (www.ncph.org)
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
|