Exercise #3: Chalk Talk
Purpose and skills being developed: This exercise is intended to help develop the student’s teaching and public presentation skills and reinforce knowledge within their area of study. Through this exercise, students will structure a logical presentation, demonstrate the breadth and limits of their knowledge, and think on their feet in response to questions.
The topic is within a student’s domain of interest, and they prepare a 30 minute “chalk-talk”, where they outline the topic in an interactive fashion on a whiteboard, in front of the advisory committee. The topic could include a key mechanism in the student’s PhD, a planned experiment for the final portion of the PhD, the workings of a key methodology for the PhD thesis, an extension on the deep-dive essay topic, or another topic approved by the advisory committee. The advisory committee may ask questions during the chalk talk, the timing of which will be capped at 45 minutes total.
There are many resources for how to give a chalk talk on-line. While these are primarily geared for job applicants, the following resources help convey the big picture of what is expected during a chalk talk.
https://neuronline.sfn.org/professional-development/your-chalk-talk-questions-answered
https://www.ascb.org/careers/academic-chalk-talk/
