Valhalla Island

The standard measure for presentations is time. “You have 15 minutes to talk about Internet Explorer 7’s CSS3 support“. I have a theory for better defining a presentation’s requirement. Instead of specifying a length, specify the scope — in detail.

The problem is students focusing way too much on how long their presentation is rather than what’s actually in it or how it’s presented.

Often time is a pretty good indicator of scope, if an application is going to take three years to develop chances are it’s complex. I’m not a fan of making school more like the real world but defining scope is more realistic. Sure we’re given deadlines but that’s very different to being told to work on something for six months and then stop.

The same goes for essay word lengths. If it can be written more succinctly with less words and better arguments, let it be. It would encourage better writing. Students would spend more time perfecting points and arguments rather than spending their time padding documents out to reach a word limit.

Length (and word count) might be easier to measure than scope satisfaction. But like a presentation that’s 10 minutes under the time limit, a presentation that barely covers the scope would be just as obvious.