In the Math 210 and CS 271 courses, students meet three days a week in their respective classes to cover the traditional content of those courses – proof techniques for Math 210 and data structures for CS 271.  Once a week, the two classes meet jointly for a 2-hour “lab” to develop their oral communication skills.  The lab is co-taught by the two instructors for the respective courses.

 

By the very nature of their disciplines, mathematics and computer science students deal with technical information on a daily basis.  Often, they are asked to share their technical findings to a general audience.  This may be for another course, senior research, the business world, or academia to name a few.  One of our main goals for this is to prepare students for the workforce and graduate school by improving their oral communication skills.  The oral communication portion of the lab consists of four components.

 

1)    Each student presents three talks on topics in mathematics and/or computer science.

2)    Each student talk is peer reviewed by four members of the class as well as by the two instructors.

3)    Each student writes a review of each of his or her own talks after viewing a recording of the talk and reading the peer evaluations.

4)    Each student critiques five outside talks, such as department or campus-wide lectures, over the course of the semester.