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Informatics Research Methodologies
Student Presentations

Here are the links to the materials you will need for this assessment:

• Presentation Timetable, including: student names, presentation titles, times and session chairs.
• Anonymous Student Presentation Peer Review Form. All members of the audience are encouraged to fill in a copy of this form and return it to the lecturer, who will pass it to the presenter.

Each student is required to give a presentation to the rest of the class on some topic in Informatics. This presentation should be based on two or three research papers. The topic and the papers should be chosen to reflect the presenter's interests.

Each presentation should be 20 minutes long with 5 minutes for questions and general discussion. The remaining members of the class will be the audience for the presentation and all members of the class are strongly encouraged to attend and to provide feedback to the presenter.

The presentation is an assessable component of the module, carrying 30% of the total mark. Between 7 and 14 hours is allocated to preparation for it. 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 20 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?
• Preparing 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 2 minutes: say 10 in total. Prepare your slides well in advance and seek feedback on them. Always visit the lecture room and test out your slides in situ, so you know all the AV works for you. Project your slides and walk to the back of the room to see what they look like. If you decide to use a laptop then share one with your buddy and put both sets of slides on the same machine to prevent those "plug and pray" moments between the talks. Alternatively, you can also use the DICE machine closest to the data-projector. Log into it and get your slides up before the session starts, so there is no delay in starting your talk.

The Mechanics of the Presentation

Presentations will take place in the second half of the module at the times assigned for lectures (plus other times, if necessary), which they will replace. There will be two 25 minute (20 minutes talk, 5 minutes discussion) presentations per 50 minute slot. The two students in each slot may like to act as "buddies", comparing notes, slides, etc before the presentations.

In discussion with the students, the lecturer will prepare a timetable of the presentations. It is inevitable that someone will be first, and hence fairly early in term.

The non-speaking student in each pair will act as session chair for the student who is presenting. Then they will switch roles for the second presentation. 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 of their own, if that proves necessary; and to thank the presenter at the end of their presentation.

The lecturer will fill in a pro forma giving feedback and a mark to the presenter. This will be given to the presenter within a week of their presentation. Note that the mark awarded is provisional and must be confirmed by the Board of Examiners.

The other students will also be provided with an anonymous peer review form, which they will fill in during the presentation. To preserve anonymity, these forms will be collected by the lecturer and given to the presenter at a subsequent presentation. These peer review forms do not form part of the assessment. It is essential for all students to come to all the presentations: to provide feedback to the presenter and to pick up tips for their own presentation.

Here are some online guides to preparing presentations.

• College's course on effective presentation from University of Edinburgh, College of Science and Engineering.
• The Key Steps to An Effective Presentation from Stephen Eggleston.
• Presentation Guidelines from George Mason University.
• Presentation Skills from University of Newcastle.

Please let me know which of these you find most/least helpful and if you find any better ones and I will edit the above list accordingly.

Alan Bundy