In a typical week, we will examine two or three research papers plus related book chapters. Most of the presentations will be done by students. If you are not presenting, you are expected to be an active participant in the discussions that follow. Basically, the student who is presenting should think of the presentation as a live version of the reviews we are doing, together with a discussion that you will lead.
Each paper will be presented by a single student or a team of two. Let's assume this is you. You should design a presentation about 15-20 minutes long that weaves together ideas from both the chapter and the paper. The way you balance this is up to you, but the paper is the more important of the two; you can add a slide on the book chapter to help give some introductory context, if you like.
The first 5 minutes of your presentation should summarize the work that was done (i.e., the Problem to be Solved and the New Idea from the paper review template). In the remaining 10-15 minutes, you should discuss Positives, Negatives, possible Future Work, your Rating, and outline the Discussion Points you want to raise. Also, feel free to add Other Comments you might have.
Your presentation will end by you starting a discussion of your Discussion Points with the rest of the class. Once you have discussed yours points, other students will be asked to raise points of their own. The discussions will last 20-30 minutes beyond the end of the presentation. A hard cap of 50 minutes (presentation + discussion) will be invoked we start to go long.
A second student (who is not presenting that week) will be appointed to act as scribe; they are responsible for taking notes of the discussions and submitting a write-up of those notes to the presenter by 8:00pm on the same day as the presentation.
The presenter does not submit a review of their paper ahead of time; instead, they first prepare and give their presentation, then lead the class discussion, and finally create a summary review that reflects both their opinions and the comments of the class in a summary review ; the summary review is due the next day by 6pm. The structure of the summary review is the same as a normal review, except that it also summarizes the class discussion, and will likely run longer than a single page.
Presentations can be done using any combination of electrifying discussion, Google Docs, LibreOffice, Powerpoint, Keynote, PDF, whiteboard drawings, or interpretive dance. If you choose to use Google Docs, OpenOffice, Powerpoint, Keynote, or PDF, then you must supply a set of slides (originals or 1-up PDF) to me; I will create a 4-up PDF version that I will put on the course web page.
I recognize that many of you have never done a conference-style presentation before. You may feel your slides are ugly or your talking style is awkward. That's OK. Part of this course is learning about these things. If you have put work into your slides and talking points, I will see this. I will try to give constructive criticism when I can. Think of this class as a friendly environment in which you can hone these skills.