Students' presentations: Teamwork and presentations guidelines
Please read carefully all the way to the end

Grade distribution:
80% grade – final presentation (all team members will receive the same grade for this part): 160 pts max
20% - team work (based on self- and peer-assessment and the journal entry):  40 pts max

Students will work in teams of 3-4 to prepare and present a 30-min talk on the general topic: "Physiological adaptations to extreme environments"

Each team will cover one of the following environments:
    Estuaries and intertidal zones
    Deserts
    Extreme cold environments (Arctic and Antarctic)
    Thermal vents
    Deep ocean (excluding thermal vents)
    Adaptations to diving

Each team must meet at least twice as a group to discuss the topic, divide the tasks and put together the presentation, and each team member must submit two journal-type entry (1-2 page each, can be hand-written) about their team-work experience. Below is the list of some issues I encourage you to pay attention to during the team meetings (your journal entries may reflect some or all of them, depending on what you have perceived as important during your meeting). Please review them before the meeting so that you know what you skills and aspects of group dynamics you need to pay attention to and to evaluate.

Communication patterns: Who talks the most? The least? How does the team ensure that all voices are heard? Do people interrupt one another? Does anyone mind interruptions? How is the agenda set for what topics are discussed? Can new topics be introduced in the course of the discussion?

Intercultural communication and diversity: If team members have different cultural backgrounds, do their backgrounds contribute to differences in their communication style? Have you needed to accommodate those differences? If so, how have you done that? If you need to be more sensitive to differences in the future, how will you accomplish that?

Task assignments: How does the team decide what needs to be done? Once tasks are identified, how are they divided up? How are deadlines determined? What happens if someone doesn't meet a deadline?

Leadership and other roles: How is a leader or facilitator of the team determined? Do the students rotate the role of facilitator among group members? What other roles do you find team members playing?

Problem solving: How has the group gone about solving problems (both related to tasks and to the maintenance of the group)? What has been effective about the processes you have used? How can you improve on your ability to solve problems?

Decision making: How are decisions made in your group? By consensus? Through voting? What happens if a group member is unhappy or uncomfortable with a decision the group has made?

Conflict Resolution: Have you had a serious conflict in your group? Assuming you resolved it, how did you do so? If you haven't worked it out, how is it affecting your ability to get work done? What will you do to resolve the conflict?

After the presentation, I will ask you to submit an overall evaluation form for your teamwork (click here to see the form). I will then determine contributions of individual students to the effective teamwork based on the self- and peer-assessment form and the journal entry.

Your presentation will be judged based on the quality of presentation, quality and appropriateness of content and your familiarity with the material as assessed by your ability to answer questions from the audience. You can see the presentation evaluation form here.

Physiological adaptations that need to be discussed in each presentations include adaptations of energy metabolism, respiration and circulation and osmoregulation.

Each presentation must begin with a brief description of the habitat and the specific environmental challenges that animals experience there, then follow on to characterize specific physiological adaptations under each rubric (adaptations of energy metabolism, respiration and circulation and osmoregulation) and give examples, and finish with a summary (1 slide) of common adaptation patterns. You also need to include a title page with the topic and the names of all team members.

                            Useful tips for Creating Effective PowerPoint Presentation:
                                        PPT basics in examples (highly recommended)
                                        Creating effective visuals in PowerPoint
                                        General Tips for an Effective PowerPoint Presentation

On the next test, each student will receive an individual question about their presentation topic – so make sure that you have learned not only your part of the assigned task, but all the relevant material on the topic.