Activities - Exercise 1: Journal Club (2 weeks, 2 hours per week)

The outcome of this activity is an oral presentation for 15 minutes, given by each student, reporting on a paper or article presented in a current issue of a technical periodical (or similar topic agreed by the Leader) followed by 5 minutes of questions. Provide students with overhead paper and pens on which to prepare their presentation. Also point out that they need to use the appropriate type of overhead-there are specific types for printing and for photocopying and just for writing on.

The Journal Club may be initiated by allotting each student a section or sections of the periodicals stack in the Departmental Library to look at. Each student has to choose an engineering topic of interest to them from within that section and is required to make a presentation to the remainder of the group on an article found in a current journal. They have to make it interesting to everyone else. Alternatively, they could choose an article from the New Scientist, or Nature to present. This is usually more appropriate than a highly technical specialist journal publication. Talk to each student individually to check they are on the right track.

A good presentation will summarise the article and criticise it for relevance, telling colleagues of the significance of the topic. A good presentation will use visual aids. (It may be suggested to students that a "Journal Club" is good practice when they are professional engineers later, to form a group to keep each other up-to-date.)

Six presentations are made each week. The Leader of this Exposition acts as Chairman. After each presentation (or at the end of the session), the whole group is asked to comment on what went particularly well. The discussion ought to be on the content with constructive criticism of the presentation. One tip is that the people presenting should try to be themselves, rather than acting how they think they 'should'. This exercise is designed to boost self confidence and to ensure students can effectively present information.

All feedback must be positive and should be given individually. One half to one A4 page of written comments compiled by the Leader during the presentation would be perfect.

Points to consider for preparing presentation (this can be printed out and given to the students)

Allocated time:15 min, 5 min for Q&A

  1. Introduce yourself
  2. List the content of the talk
  3. Introduce topic ~2-3 min
  4. Main body of talk in sections ~11-12 min
  5. Summary/conclusions ~1 min.

Pay attention to:

  • Background of audience
  • Logic and clarity of presentation
  • What article you choose to present
  • Amount of information to present
  • Use of graphs/tables/charts/photos and other visual aids such as models where appropriate.

Suggestion 1

Journal Club can be used to introduce the existence and purpose of the Professional Engineering Institutions. Students can be asked to choose from the journals produced by the various Institutions to get topics and material for their presentation. This idea can be followed up in the discussion/debate activity(see suggestion 6 in that section).

Each presentation of the technical material should be allocated 15min with 5 min questions. The students not the Leader are responsible for asking questions on the presentations, and each student must ask at least one question during the Journal Club activity as a whole.

Suggestion 2

This activity is based on getting students to prepare a brief report on a technical topic, to inform someone with no prior knowledge of the subject. An example of where this is done in real life is the reports prepared to brief Members of Parliament on technical subjects. Example reports of this type can be found at the Parliamentary web site: http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/post-notes/.

'POST' which hosts this site, is an office of the two UK Houses of Parliament (Commons and Lords), charged with providing balanced and objective analyses of science and technology based issues of relevance to Parliament. POST carries out studies in areas such as defence, transport, environment and health as well as science policy. Draw the students attention to the relevant web site (http://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/offices/bicameral/post/).

Suggest each student choose a technical engineering subject that interests them, looking in the journals for inspiration on a current topic. They then produce a 'CUEDnote' in a similar fashion to the official 'POSTnotes'.

Each student is allocated ten minutes to present their report to the rest of the group, using overhead transparancies, and then faces questions from the group for a further 10 min.

The order in which the students present can be made random (for fairness) by asking them to select from numbered cards. The list of titles (see suggestions below) are circulated to the group prior to the presentations, so they can think of questions for each other. This assignment is marked on participation as well as presentation.

The briefing paper or 'cuednote', prepared using a standard template, is collected by the Exposition Leader after the presentation, and these should be of sufficient quality to allow them to be used in other courses. Maximum length is limited to 4 pages, as for an official parliamentary 'POST' note.

It would be great to build up the series as a useful resource. The template for the briefing note is provided as a Word template below.

Suggested titles (October, 2003):

  • Risks of old satellites falling back to earth and "congestion" in space
  • Hydrogen-fuelled cars
  • Applications of electroactive polymer
  • Safety issues associated with public footbridges
  • Impact of Air Traffic on air quality
  • Robots and Emotions
  • Environmental effects caused by the exploration and extraction of oil
  • Security of internet based systems
  • The effects of 911 on engineering