Presentations

Goals

To help students learn to clearly communicate technical material with others.

Format

Each presenter will prepare a 30-35 minute talk on the paper(s) that he or she presents that week. Slides for the talk must be emailed to the professor by midnight before the class. The presenter also leads another 20-30 minutes of discussion during/after the talk. For this, the presenter will prepare questions that lead to a deeper analysis of the paper's content, presentation, strengths, and weaknesses. Students do not need to write critiques for weeks in which they present. You may adapt slides from other presentations as long as you acknowledge your sources.

• Prepare ~15 slides. This does not count animations or other techniques to explain or illustrate the technique within a slide.
• Illustrate how the technique works. Use an example, whether concrete or abstract. Do not explain the technique with verbose writing.
• Consider the strengths and weaknesses. Is the technique reasonable? Is the evaluation realistic?
• Prepare discussion questions.
• Be prepared to answer questions. The talk should fuel discussion and problems that we will work through together. As much as possible, the presenter should act as an expert consultant during these discussions.

Grading

I shall evaluate your talk on a ten point scale. There is one bonus point available. Most talks will receive a ten.

• 4 points for clearly explaining the ideas in the paper.
• 3 points for clear, well organized slides.
• 3 points for leading stimulating discussion.
• 1 point for exceeding my expectations in some area.

_{^{This guide for presentations comes courtesy of Antony Hosking}}