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                                     Evidence-Based Teaching 

First, I will talk about an example of evidence-based teaching used in my KNU classes. I read a study by C. Prichard, and D. Ferreira called The Effects of Poster Presentations and Class Presentations on Low Proficiency Learners. The study showed that poster presentations, which are given repeatedly to small groups, increase the rate of speaking, leading to better vocabulary retention and affective effects. I applied their evidence-based methods to my classes. The students in groups made posters on A3 paper, which they then had to present to their classmates. However, instead of one group of students standing in front of the class, we used the conference style of presenting posters. Students learned in a previous class how to give a short “elevator pitch” to promote their posters. I found that the students were fully engaged by the conference style of poster presentations. With 5 groups of 4, two members from each group were presenters, and the other 2 members made up the audience. The posters were taped to the walls around the classroom so that audience members could walk around the room and hear everyone’s presentation. This resulted in the students doing their presentation five times. Then, the students switched roles with the presenters becoming the audience and the audience becoming the presenters. I observed some of the same results as the authors of the study: an increased rate of speaking, which led to better vocabulary retention and increased engagement and reduced anxiety (affective effects).