Student Presentations

Each student is required to give a presentation to the rest of the class. This
presentation should be based a few papers. The topic and papers will
be chosen to reflect the student's interests.  Conference papers are one
obvious source. The other papers can be longer and more technical, eg journal
papers, technical reports and even parts of books or theses.

Each presentation will be nominally 30-40 minutes long. The remaining 10 minutes
will be used for questions and general discussion. Other members of the class
will be expected to have read the advance paper on the topic and to come armed
with suitable questions and discussion points. Another member of the class will
fill in a review form on the papers.

 The mark will be based mainly on the understanding demonstrated of the material
presented as well as the quality of the presentation itself.

Skills to be Developed

The presentation is designed to help you develop the following skills: 

      Reading in depth. The level of understanding of a research paper required
      to give a presentation on it is deeper than you may be used to. You will
      probably need to read key bits more than once. You may want to try your
      own examples on the techniques described. As you prepare your talk you
      will discover that there are details that you did not quite grasp on first
      reading and you will have to read them up again.

      Designing a talk. In 30-40 minutes there is no time for padding. Identify the
      main point(s) you want to convey and go as directly to it/them as quickly
      as possible. Reiterate this point(s) in title, introduction and
      conclusion. Give only the background information that is vital to
      understand the main point(s). Keep a mental model of the state of your
      audience's understanding: what have you told them so far? did they
      understand it? what do they need to know to understand the next point? The
      fourth tutorial is about presenting a talk.

      Preparing overhead slides. Make sure the slides are visible from the back
      of the room. Use big letters and write clearly (or use typed output). Keep
      the information content of each slide small. Use short noun phrases as
      slogans for each point of the argument. Keep the number of slides small,
      i.e. no more than one every 3 minutes: 13 in total. Prepare your slides
      well in advance and get feedback on them. Try them out and walk to the
      back of the room to see what they look like.

The Mechanics of the Presentation

For each presentation one of the other students will be nominated by the group
convener as the session chair. The role of the session chair during the
presentation will be: to introduce the presenter; to remind the presenter when
their time is nearly up and to terminate their presentation if they run
overtime; to run the question period, initiating it with a question if that
proves necessary; and to thank the presenter at the end of their
presentation. The session chair should also assist the presenter in the
preparation of the presentation, for instance, by meeting with them in advance
to discuss and give feedback on content, organisation, format, style, use of
materials, etc.

Another student will be provided with an anonymous peer review form which they
will fill in during the presentation. These forms will be collected and given to
the presenter at a subsequent presentation. These peer review forms do not form
part of your assessment.