Good use of pictures: A picture is worth a thousand words, and billions and billions of

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1 How to Give a Research Seminar When presenting a seminar, the following guidelines may be useful. The main thing to remember when giving a seminar is that you must own the presented material. If you make an argument, or put up a slide that says "X", then you are responsible for that argument and for that slide. Whatever you choose to present is YOURS. If someone asks you a question about the content of your seminar, then you are duty bound to defend that content. Wimping out is not allowed (e.g. "I didn't real mean that. Sorry. Won't happen again. Can I go now?"). Preparation It is painfully obvious when someone has not prepared their talk. They get flustered at question time, since they do not know their material well. They run over time. The talk itself starts nowhere and goes nowhere. The main point of the talk is not clear. Here are some tips on seminar preparation: Some people find public speaking a little intimidating. One way to improve your confidence is to have a firm grasp of your material. Practice, practice, practice. Write your seminar, and then run through it many many times. Leave time to revise your slides after you have rehearsed them. Style You may find it helpful to model your presentation style on that of your favorite lecturer - never make the same mistakes your teachers did. Clear use of definitions: Consider your definitions carefully. Make sure you use the same terms consistently through out your talk. Perhaps you need a slide where such definitions are presented. More generally, make sure your talk has a clear structure; i.e. is well motivated, has clear definitions/examples and moves clearly through its goals. Sum up the key contributions of the presented work at the end. Seek the clarifying example. Is there a small problem that an audience can digest in a few minutes that show what you are talking about? Seek the clarifying anecdote. Is there some tale you can tell that puts the whole thing into perspective? Good separation text/commentary: When planning your slides, decide what should be text and what should be commentary: Just because words are on a slide, does not mean you have to say it. Further, you can say much more than what is on a slide. One successful presenter I knew would just put up some key phrases or unlabeled diagrams on each slide, then talk to each slide for five minutes. Another technique is to write out your entire script, then select the key words/phrases for your slides. As you put up your slide, you then read from the script. It makes for a not-so-spontaneous presentation, but it has the advantage of being very structured. 1/6

2 The Seminar is a Journey Start from the Common Premise and proceed directly to the Ultimate Idea. Do not get sidetracked. The common premise is the idea, which everyone agrees on. The most specific your common premise, the less ground your have to cover your work in between. Your common premise should be understood by the majority of the audience and believable with a quick explanation to the others. The key to composing the common premise is the correct identification of your audience. Here are some examples of different audiences you might have to face: Graduate students may not know much about the forefront of research in your chosen area, so to speak to them it would be necessary to find a well-known problem (e.g. we need to cure cancer, write working software). Scientists who do not share your research interests will be familiar with the important problems in your field, so you can choose a less general problem to start with (e.g. we need to discover the structure of a certain virus, we need to detect invariant violations in a program). Scientists who share your research interests not only understand your area, but may have their own ideas how to solve the problems your are discussing. In this case, you can use a very specialized common premise (e.g., we need to determine when eager evaluation may be substituted for lazy evaluation without introducing nontermination). The ultimate idea is the single goal that your paper/seminar should achieve. The ultimate idea should be novel, unusual or unexpected. The ultimate idea should demonstrate progress towards the solution of the common premise. Question Time You can judge how successful a talk is by the question time. If have successfully matched your content to the audience (e.g. found a good common premise), then your talk should produce some reaction in the audience. If you get no questions at all, then your message did not mean anything to your audience. Leave time for audience questions (e.g. in a 30 minute session, you talk for minutes). When you get questions, answer them clearly and concisely. Counter-positions anticipated: If the position you are taking is controversial, consider what questions other would ask you. Anticipate the questions and either: Answer them as part of your presentation (the head-em-off-at-the-pass strategy); or Have a good answer ready for those questions. Handle questions in a timely manner: Sometimes the audience interrupts you with a question. Don't let yourself be side-tracked. Its your seminar, after all. Answer the question quickly or "I'll be coming to that" or "Can I take that question in question time?" During question time, if you are asked a question that takes a lot of time answering, don't answer it if other people are waiting to ask a question. You can say, "Shall we take that up off-line afterwards? Before answering a question, try repeating a summary of it back to the asker. Their are two reasons for this: 2/6

3 Even if you then go on to disagree with the person asking the question, the process of summarising their question will show the asker that you at least heard and understood their question. Sometimes, not everyone in the audience can hear the initial question. Sometimes, a question from the audience is really two, three, or more questions bundled up into one. Apply the above "repeat-the-question" process. For example: "lets see, you made three points which were A, B and C". Then answer the ones that you can comment on. When disagreeing with someone, think fast. See if you can find the basic issue which, if resolved one way or the other, confirms or refutes your case. Attack that basic issues. Note that such thinking-on-your-feet takes practice; its not an easy thing for beginners to do. Recognise "I don't know": If someone asks you a question for which you don't know the answer, be honest and clear in your answer: "I don't know. However, if we reframe the question like this..., then I can make a comment on that issue." "I could comment on that, however given my current experimental results, such a comment would be an unfounded speculation." "Before I could comment on that, I would need to review X, Y and Z. At this stage, however, I must pass on that question." "That's an interesting idea. Perhaps we can talk afterwards about that? Do you have any references on that?" One nice way to end your talk is to put up a final slide that says "discussion points". This can prime the audience for the question time. Word Processing Details Not too many slides: For a twenty-minute talk, I try for 12 slides, two of which are "introduction" and "conclusion". Not too many dots: On each slide, I aim for 4-5 dot points/slide. Slide text is usually point (18 pt minimum). Exception: Courier text is bigger than normal fonts. Sometimes 16, or even 14pt text can work fine. Good use of pictures: A picture is worth a thousand words, and billions and billions of Greek letters. If the audience can see a graphical demonstration of why some statements are true, they are likely to believe you quickly. When using slides, don't be too clever with color. Lots of thin colored lines just disappear on certain overhead projectors. Personally, I always stay with black & white. If using PowerPoint, there is really a neat print option "Print Handouts (6 slides per page)". This allows you to take you 12-page seminar, print it on two pages, copy it back-to-back, and then hand it out to your audience on one sheet of paper. Examples A Good Example I asked a student to try and demonstrate some of these principles for some topic. This guy lept to his feet and deliberately tripped as he stepped up to podium. Then he turned to the class and said: 3/6

4 So, I just tripped. What worker's compensation am I entitled to? Well, that depends on how we characterize this accident. He then wrote four initials on the board. For each initial in turn he then: Expanded it into a full phrase (e.g. "T" became "accident Type"). Gave an example of its usage for the "tripping on the podium" example. Then he said Why do we bother doing this? and told a story of how workers compensation claims were being standardized across Australia in order to make the claim process fairer to all accident victims. Finally, he said that such a fair claims system would allow insurance companies to simply their claims processing which could reduce the cost of insurance premiums. The above took less than 60 seconds... Note the structure of the talk: A common premise (we all trip over something) An ultimate idea (reducing the complexity and cost of insurance claims). Tripping on the podium at the start served as an introductory anecdote and a clarifying example through out his talk. The important ideas were stressed and the core message was clearly stated. The talk had clear use of definitions (the four words on the board). Good separation of text and commentary was achieved (four words on the blackboard were the text; a minute of discussion was the commentary). Marking Scheme I mark seminars using a relative and an absolute criteria. Final mark is 60% on the absolute plus 40% on the relative. Note that this scheme emphasizes structure and form over content. For assessing content, I get students to hand in an essay on the same topic. This essay is marked according to my rules for writing an essay. The essay is due one week after the seminar so that, if students wish to, they can use feedback gained from the talk to improve the essay. Relative Criteria The first presentation gets a zero mark. The next presentation is given a plus/zero/ or minus mark depending on a subjective assessment of whether it or not it was better/same/worse as the first presentation. Subsequent presentations are marked on the same scale. In the end, there will be (at most) seven clusters of presentations. Each cluster is at least four marks different to its neighbor. A second subjective assessment decides which cluster was at a pass level. This cluster gets 16/28. The rest get a mark relative to this pass cluster. Absolute mark Use the following marking sheet: 4/6

5 Name Date Subject Relative mark /28 * 1.5 = / 40 Absolute mark /28 * 2 = / 60 Total mark /100 ====================================================================== Area Item ====================================================================== Overall Well prepared The talk Good common premises... y n Correct identification of audience... y n Clear ultimate idea... y n Minimal sidetracks... y n Introduction aroused interest?... y n Transistions clear and effective... y n Counter-positions anticipated... y n Clear use of definitions... y n Clarifying example... y n Clarifying anecdote... y n Good seperation text/commentary... y n Finished in allocated time... y n / Question time Thinks fast... y n na Answers clear and concise... y n na Recognises "I don't know"... y n na Talk inspired questions... y n Handles questions in a timely manner... y n na Repeats questions (optional)... y n Word processing Not too may slides... y n Not too many dots/slide... y n Good use of pictures... y n /6 /3 5/6

6 The speaker Maintains eye contact... y n Appears relaxed... y n Moves and gestures effectively... y n Voice loud and clear... y n Not speaking too fast... y n Vary tone of voice... y n /6 ====================================================================== Totals /28 6/6