B552 Knowledge-Based Computation - Spring 2008

Guidelines for Paper Presentations

Goals of the Presentation

Preparation for the presentation involves investigating an area and thinking critically about it, to share your own analysis and ideas with the class and spark interesting discussion, not only about the paper, but about the key ideas it illustrates and related topics.

Use the paper as a jumping-off point: Because the rest of the class will have read the main paper before your presentation, your review of the paper should be brief. The presentation should move as quickly as possible to the issues that you consider central; it should distill and organize what you've learned to communicate it to the class and get them involved in the issues you've addressed, and should bring in ideas beyond the paper, often including information from other papers you've tracked down and studied on your own.

Some key points are:

Place the research/issue in context of related work and the class
Identify/explain the central principles of the approach(es)
What do you consider the main contribution? (This may not be what the authors consider the main contribution.)
What are the strengths and weakensses?
How does this relate to other possible approaches, either from the literature or that you can imagine for the task (coming up with your own creative solutions is great!)
Take a stand on what the work shows and what should be done next
Raise interesting issues for the class to discuss and think about. Please generate a list of discussion questions for the class.
Provide useful information for those who'd like to follow up on the topic.

Presenters are encouraged to discuss their presentation ideas with the instructor and others as they refine their topics and prepare their presentation materials.

Presentation Format

Presentations will be done jointly by teams of presenters.
Each presentation session will last a full class period, starting with 40-50 minutes of presentation (this may include discussion). The presentation should stop after 50 minutes, so be sure that you will cover the material within that limit. This is followed by remarks by the discussants, and further open discussion led by the presenters.
Presenters should present questions to guide the discussion, or controversial claims to spur debate!
Please do a practice run-through of your talk to make sure that your material fits into the allotted time and allows for discussion. During the presentation, those not presenting should keep track of time for the others, to make sure that the presentation stays on schedule.

Presentation Page for Posting (send URL 24 hours in advance)

At least 24 hours before your presentation, send the URL for your presentation overview/summary to the instructor, for him to add it to the course home page. You are encouraged to have the summary page include a link to your presentation slides. The overview/summary should be a 1-page summary/abstract of main points, with references, to serve both as a summary and a continuing resource for others interested in the area. After the presentation, this should be updated with notes from the discussion and references relevant to the points raised there.