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 about the key ideas it illustrates and related topics.
The assigned paper is a jumping-off point: As the rest of the class will have read the paper, your review of the paper should be brief. Move as quickly as possible to the issues that you consider central; an distill and organize what you've learned to get the class involved in the issues you've addressed. You 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:
· How does the research/issue related to other work, from the class and from the rest of the field? (Group members can each look at selected citations from the paper and discuss them before the presentation.)
· What are the central principles of the approach(es)?
· What confused you? If anything did, the class will probably be confused too, so this is important to explain/clarify.
· 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!)
· What does the work show?
· What should be done next?
Presenters are encouraged to discuss their presentation ideas with the instructor and others (except for the discussants) as they refine their topics and prepare their presentation materials.
Presentation Format
All presentations should include at least the following components, in the following order (if you believe another format is better, please discuss it with us for approval). These will be noted in grading. All team members should present, with each having roughly equal presentation time.
1. Introduction to the problem being addressed
2. Overview of approach/how it fits into the field
3. In-depth treatment of most interesting aspects or aspects challenging to understand
4. Presentation of key experimental results
5. The presenters’ view of strengths and weaknesses of the paper
6. Perspective: detailed comparison to related work and/or your ideas on the broader area
7. Brief summary comments
8. Team-led discussion (after discussants’ comments). Each presentation should end with one or more slides of questions as a jumping-off point for discussion at the end of the session. These could touch on strategies for solving a problem, alternative methods, methodological points, etc.
Session Format
· Presentations will be done jointly by teams of presenters.
· Each presentation team will be responsible for one class period. There is flexibility on how to break this down, but a guideline is 40-45 minutes of presentation (integrating questions/discussion is encouraged), 10-15 minutes for interaction with the discussants, and 10-15 minutes of additional class discussion led by the presenters.
· Presenters are responsible for the discussion and 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 in the team, to make sure that the presentation stays on schedule. To make sure there is time for the discussants and following discussion, the presentation will be timed and length limited, so be sure to end promptly.
Submission of Slides
Within 24 hours after your presentation, submit your slides to canvas.
Discussant Guidelines
· For each presentation, some students will be assigned as discussants. The discussants will make brief presentations after the main presentation, giving ideas, raising questions, and responding to the points raised in the presentation
· Each discussant will provide a brief alternative view, so each should independently analyze the paper (the points described in the presenter guidelines above will be helpful for this).
· The discussant's presentation should compare and contrast points with the ones presented and raise questions on the material covered. The discussant should feel free to play "devil's advocate" to spur debate!
· The discussant presentations should be concise: 2-4 minutes.
· Prior to the paper session, each discussant for that paper will submit a short (about 250-word) PDF file on canvas with their assessment of the paper (strengths, weaknesses, key questions). Note that these are individual, not group write-ups---each discussant should work independently and submit individually. These cannot be submitted late.
· The write-up should include the discussant’s name and the name of the paper
Question Submission (by non-presenters/non-discussants)
Each student will be a presenter for one paper and discussant for another. For 3 of the 4 papers on which s/he is not a presenter or discussant, each student will submit on canvas, before the class in which the paper is presented, a few sentences on a question/disagreement they still have about the work in the paper, after reading it. These cannot be submitted late.
This should include:
1. A sentence or two of background to the question (e.g., if the question is about a detail of a method, the background would be a quick summary of the method, if it’s about a research claim, the claim and its rationale should be summarized).
2. The question itself
These questions should then be raised during the discussion period for the paper, as time permits.
Please ask if you have any questions!