Engagement as Inclusivity:
Reimagining the Presentation Assignment

Each fall quarter, the College of Creative Studies invites colleagues from the writing program to speak to their writing and literature majors about writing studies as a discipline that comprises multiple subdisciplines. Kenny and I are frequently paired as speakers to introduce our respective research projects in science communication, as well as to answer students' questions about courses, the best books to read (yes, these are student authors who love books!), and career pathways. Our talks occur in the Old Little Theatre, on a modest stage swathed in black curtains and accessorized with chairs that euphemistically might be called shabby chic. Each fall, as I tell shadowy forms in dimly lit theater seats about my backstory, I am reminded of the field's reliance on public presentations and the challenges they bring.

My backstory starts with an abundance of STEM-related childhood memories. As an air force brat, I was born into an environment saturated with advanced science and technology: secure walkie-talkies known as bricks for their weight and size, which my father carried daily; flightlines, ICBM missile silos, and the Vandenberg Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC 6, "Slick Six"), which were at different times under his command; and computers with daisy-wheel printers on which my sister and I lost Star Trek games to a mainframe computer (refer to Boyd et al., 2004, for a more detailed technology literacy narrative). My mother was a physical therapist who maintained her license even as we moved every 2 years or so, and who countered the initial squeamishness of her daughters towards high school biology dissections by calmly talking about the cadaver she had worked on during her own medical education. She also passed along a love of embroidery, especially pieces featuring nature subjects. As a family, we were birdwatchers, amateur astronomers, photographers, aquarium hobbyists, and participants in conservation efforts.

From this childhood, I went to a small liberal arts college initially thinking that I might major in biology. However, I was interested in English literature. And the history and philosophy of science. And languages. And computers. And music. I ended up earning an English major plus three minors. My biology professors and peers teased me with their predictions that I would go on to write articles in Spanish for Scientific American and to speak at NSF-sponsored conferences. Little did I know then how close they came to identifying my eventual career path (after detours) of becoming a writing professor who teaches science communication.

At the same time, I've frequently heard colleagues across the campus assert, with undertones of tough love, that students must be taught public speaking skills. Too often, though, public speaking continues to be equated to academic lecturing, with a sage on the stage working through slide decks. In other parts of the campus, public speaking seems limited to business connotations such as pitching proposals or giving reports to teams and stakeholders. As David Boromisza-Habashi et al. (2015) have argued, these representations of public speaking form an Anglo-American cultural ideal that ignores other cultural models of public speaking. The standard conventions signal a particular cultural identity, just as adherence to a strict cultural ideal of academic punctuation and word usage do, and they can be heavily policed. Consider, for example, the practice of having students count the number of ums when a peer presents their findings from a research project. The much younger educator in me pleads guilty to encouraging such policing.

Now, as I write this webtext, I find myself reflecting on two shifts regarding education that writing studies professionals have supported. The first recognizes that accommodations for mental health issues can and should be made. During college and graduate school, my professors never considered the nervous responses I had to public speaking to be phenomena pointing to a condition that health professionals could help address. Rather, like writer's block, my responses were framed as a condition to be overcome through self-will, discipline, and practice. Today, as several scholars in disability studies (e.g., Butler-Rees, 2021; Leigh & Brown, 2020) have argued, this internalized perfectionism among academics in neoliberal institutions is as unhealthy as it is unrealistic. The second shift is the broad recognition that current-traditional pedagogies, with rigidly defined conventions, are used to tacitly and explicitly exclude those who do not match a certain cultural ideal. Students today expect more inclusive pedagogical approaches from their instructors.

Fortunately, more malleable models for public presentations are readily available, especially in science communication. To be sure, science communicators may use sage-on-stage approaches, but, because of the emphasis on both teaching and engaging multiple audiences, they often choose interactive and out-of-the-box approaches. Science communicators are choreographers of experiences as much as they are speakers, as they encourage audience members to become invested in, and to contribute to, the topic at hand.

Or, perhaps, I should say in hand. As just one example of how experiences may be choreographed, science communicators may ask audience members to participate in a conversation by using their hands. They encourage audience members

• to handle props (e.g., "If the earth were represented by a basketball, and the moon, a tennis ball, how far apart would you need to hold them to accurately represent the distance between the earth and the moon?" [Veritasium, 2011]);
• to use parts of their hands as readily available scales of measurement (e.g., "North America's smallest butterfly, the Western pygmy blue, has a wingspan the size of your smallest fingernail.");
• to more safely waft scents towards the nose so that they can be recognized (e.g., "Do not deeply inhale that unknown gas."); and
• to feel textures (e.g., "Stroke your fingers down the arms of this seastar.").

Science communicators choreograph experiences using the all the senses, as well as physical motion, asking audiences to form groups or to move from one side of a room to another.

Such interactive techniques are typically associated with informal learning spaces, such as museums, zoos, and nature centers, where docents are stationed around the area to encourage visitors to participate in one-to-one or small group activities. However, given the limitations of the sage-on-stage model, these techniques merit more use in formal learning spaces as well. When presentations are redefined as communicators choreographing experiences to which audience members contribute their own knowledge, then the dynamics are changed. Audience members become more explicitly responsible for deciding how they will respond to such invitations to engage with the presentation, as well as what they will share and learn.

As faculty members, if we define a broader range of presentation techniques as legitimate in academic spaces, then we open more possibilities for student success. I came to this realization while working with the student who had panicked in my office to reach an accommodation. She and I discussed multiple options, during which she determined that she most feared extended speaking in front of the class. A few sentences would be fine. To conduct her presentation, she researched and then created stations with different activities for her peers to perform individually and in groups. At the start of the presentation, in two to three sentences, she instructed her peers to circulate among the stations for 10 minutes and to be prepared for a 5-minute conversation about their experiences. In all, the audience members did the bulk of the talking. To enable this conversation, though, the student had done quite a bit of work behind the scenes: trying out different possible activities, gathering supplies, writing out instructions, and setting up the stations. Ultimately, the class voted her presentation to be among the best and most enjoyable of the quarter.

Since that time, I have taken advantage of the curb-cut effect. Just as curb cuts in sidewalks were first ordered as an accommodation and became valued by a much larger constituency than people using wheelchairs, allowing a broad range of presentation techniques empowers all students to play to their strengths. In the last 5 years, students have presented topics by including digital surveys as they talk; interacting live with presentations they have recorded in advance; asking audience members to carry out brief experiments at their desks, whether analog (e.g., identifying plant specimens) or digital (e.g., analyzing visual illusions online); and, of course, by speaking with a slide deck. What has surprised me most is how well students are able to present humanities topics in the same way. One student involved in preserving an Indigenous language set up stations around the classroom to explain not just a vocabulary word, but the connotations it has in different contexts.

Perhaps most important, incorporating science communication techniques within courses helps shift the attitudes toward giving presentations from fearful to fun. If I had had these options during college, I would not have had to "power through" public speaking to gain the confidence to converse with students from an old theater stage. I would have been able to develop confidence at my own pace, while better including my audience members in a more enjoyable experience.