In Class Presentation
Everyone in class will be required to do one 20-25 minute presentation on
an
assigned reading. The purpose of these presentations is not just to
summarize the article, but to highlight points that would lead to critical
analysis of the content, users, and information needs.
Too often, undergraduate presentations of papers tend to just summarize
the text. That is not the purpose of this exercise. Consider this
presentation to be kind of like an oral term paper. It should contain real
analysis. I do not want to see sweeping generalizations, hastily thrown
together conclusions, or shallow analysis of an article. You should spend
as much time and thought on this presentation as you would on a paper.
Just showing up and talking will not be sufficient.
To help you prepare, I expect your presentation to include the following:
- What is the thesis of the article?
- Who are the users and what is their specific information needs
addressed in this reading? Why is this information need a challenge? Give
a good starting context for why the topic in the article is important. For
example, if you were presenting an article about information systems for
autistic children, you should describe the symptoms faced by the children,
why that poses a challenge for using information systems, and describe
what kinds of unique information needs they have (or explain that their
needs are representative of the general population)
- A summary of the main arguments / points of the reading. If the
article presents an experiment, discuss who the subjects were, what the
experiment was testing, how the experiment was carried out, what the
results were, and how they were analyzed. If the reading is something like
a government report, describe the agency/group who conducted the study,
what was the stimulus for conducting it, who did they talk to, what sorts
of questions were asked, what were the conclusions reached, what were
their recommendations. If you were preparing this as a powerpoint
presentation, you could think about having 1-2 slides on each item listed
here.
-
If your paper is about an information system that can be demonstrated, you
should do a demonstration. Certainly, some systems are are proprietary or
not available. However, I will specifically choose some papers that have
demos and indicate to you if they are available. Demonstrations should be
well thought out to illustrate important points about the software to the
audience - don't just randomly show features.
- Give a critical analysis of this article. What are the strong points
of their analysis? What are the week points? These should address the
article in particular (e.g. the number of subjects in an experiment, the
scope of a government report). You should not give general (and not very
thoughtful) sweeping statements like 'The article didn't solve the whole
problem.'
- Moving beyond the article, place the conclusions the authors reached
in a larger context for this set of users and their information needs.
Does the article address a significant part of the problem? Does it
provide a very specific solution to a small part of the problem?
- Future directions - what would be an interesting way to extend what
was done in the article. Should the work be expanded? Was it theoretical
work that should be tried in practice? How?
- Discussion/Analysis questions - conclude with a few questions that
could lead to discussion of this article. These should be critical
questions about the topic.
I encourage you to look to other sources to supplement this presentation.
You do not have to stick entirely to this article. For example, if you are
presenting on a new legal research service and you have access to existing
services, it would be great to show us the existing system with an example
of what's bad about it that the new system might fix. This makes the
presentation more interesting for everyone
And on that note...Power Point and other presentation tools can be
dangerous. No one wants to look at a bunch of slides with 5 levels of
bullet points or paragraphs of text cut and paste from the article. I
consider it my duty and a goal of this course to teach you to use Power
Point well. Take a look at Tufte's articles on power point. If you have
more than 3 levels of bullets, it's too much. Do not cut and paste text
from the article. Use charts with legible labels and scales. Make it
interesting! You will be graded on the quality of your presentation. You
do not have to use power point, but if you do, the quality of your slides
will matter.
This presentation will be a significant part of your grade, and you will
be graded on the following. Note that 30% of the grade is based just on
the quality of the presentation independent of the content.
- Clear discussion of users, information needs, and context. (10 points)
- Clear and correct presentation of article thesis (10 points)
- Clear and correct presentation of the article's methods, conclusions,
and analysis. If the system can be demonstrated, is the demo well
organized to make a point about the system? (15 points)
- Thoughtful independent analysis of the article (15 points)
- Careful and analytic placement of the article in the context of our
interests in this class (10 points)
- Interesting and insightful future directions and discussion questions
(10 points)
- Time - was the presentation 20-25 minutes (not too long, not too
short)
(15 points)
- Presentation - was the presentation well organized, rehearsed, and
professional (15 points)
Finally, for the sake of us all, try to be entertaining. You don't need to
do a stand up routine, but these presentations will be half the class!
Imagine how bored we all will be if everyone stands there and gives
monotone presentations week after week.