Young adults spend so much time on social media\u2014why not use it to teach them Spanish?<\/p>\n
That was the question behind Sofia Sweeney\u2019s<\/strong> thesis. The Northern Arizona University graduate student invited dozens of her beginner Spanish students to join her on Instagram, where each day she posted a word in Spanish. They then posted a picture related to that word, captioned it in Spanish and commented on their classmates\u2019 pictures, also in Spanish.<\/p>\n After a semester of this, she found students who participated in this learning both understood more Spanish and retained it for longer than those who learned in more traditional methods.<\/p>\n There\u2019s more to it, of course, but at the fourth annual 3 Minute Research Presentation<\/a> (3MRP) competition on Tuesday at the High Country Conference Center, Sweeney stuck to the basics, summing up her 80-page thesis in three minutes and doing it so convincingly that she won not only first place and the accompanying $3,000 prize but also the people\u2019s choice award, which was an additional $1,000.<\/p>\n \u201cStudents can learn and practice Spanish in a real-world context using their mobile devices at anytime from anywhere, so their language learning is no longer limited to their time spent in the classroom,\u201d she said. \u201cThe last thing I want is for my students to be bored to tears in my classroom doing monotonous bookwork. I strive to incorporate a lot of fun and relevant activities that get learners excited about Spanish and involved in their own learning process.\u201d<\/p>\n Eight graduate students presented at 3MRP Tuesday. The students all had the same challenge: pare down a complicated, technical research question on which they\u2019ve spent hundreds of hours studying into a 180-second presentation that is understandable to the hundreds of non-experts in the room. Topics ranged from bee pollination to rape myths to alternative treatments of bacterial infections.<\/p>\n The program, which takes place at universities throughout the nation, helps prepare graduate students to present their research, said Maribeth Watwood<\/strong>, dean of the Graduate College<\/a>. Although most people only saw these presentations, each of the students spent months during training and practice sessions and preliminary heats, much of which was facilitated by the Cline Library<\/a>, one of the partners with 3MRP.<\/p>\n \u201cThe 3 Minute Research Presentation final competition is a celebration of the outstanding scholarly work conducted by our graduate students,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is extremely fulfilling to see our students shine with their professional presentation skills.\u201d<\/p>\n Sweeney, who graduates in May, will present this research with her academic adviser, Yuly <\/strong>Asenci\u00f3n-Delaney<\/strong>, at the Computer-Assisted Language Instruction Consortium Conference at NAU in May and will apply to present it at other conferences. She is preparing it for publication as well.<\/p>\n She also may not be done with the three-minute presentations. First-place winners from throughout Arizona will compete at a state competition and then may go onto regional competitions. Uzma Tahir<\/strong>, last year\u2019s winner, recently won a regional 3 Minute Research Presentation.<\/p>\n