UTA Libraries Pitch of the Week (POW!) Contest is a fun, fast-paced, competitive event for students from diverse backgrounds, subject disciplines and levels of experience to sharpen their teamwork skills, think on their feet, and communicate their creative ideas. Students are put on the spot to work together in a safe, positive, low-risk environment.
POW! is a game-show-style contest where teams of three or four students compete to pitch their proposals to a randomly selected prompt. Teams have 20 minutes to brainstorm and develop their pitch—it can be an invention, a new business, a product, a service, a solution to pressing problem… anything that speaks to the given prompt! Teams then have 5 minutes to present their pitches, which are judged by local community and business leaders, UTA faculty, Peer Academic Leaders, and the audience.
For my research, I am comparing undergraduate student self-confidence before and after participation in the POW! contest. In this report I describe how I used the contest to satisfy my goal of measuring how student self-confidence in teamwork, proposal writing, technical communication, creative thinking and critical thinking are affected by participating in a fun, low-risk competitive environment. I have described the contest at the above website, and on my PLC Mini-conference website. Please refer to those resources for in-depth information about the POW! contest itself.