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Class Presentations

Here is the process for class presentations. Please note that this is my first cut at it. I hope to improve it further based on experience over the course of this semester.

• Advice: I will be enhancing this as the semester passes.
  • Our focus is technical, not managerial
  • Avoid redundancy.
  • Value add: I am not looking for long lists of features or alternatives, so much as the ideas that underlie them. Evaluate approaches and claims by others. Highlight trade-offs and scenarios where one approach may be better than another. You may not be accustomed to thinking in this fashion; in that case, the exercise is even more valuable.
• Schedule:
  • Please finalize your topic and selection (book section or paper) well in advance.
  • Please send me your slides (ideally as a URL to pdf, html, ppt) by the following schedule: Sunday night for Thursday presentations and Thursday night for Tuesday presentations. I will give you comments at least a day before your talk.
  • Please finalize and submit your slides by 5:00PM on the day before your presentation so they can be posted for the class.
• Originality of presentation: even though the material is well-known, your presentation should not be lifted from another party. Credit your sources: not doing so is considered plagiarism.
• Duration: We can have up to 24 minutes with 1 minute to change speakers.
• Questions: you may dedicate 5 minutes at the end for questions if you prefer.
• Visual aids: You should prepare transparencies. You can bring hard copies and present them through the document camera. If you have color slides, you might prefer to load them on the PC in the classroom or place them on a web-site and access them through a browser. You are responsible for checking the logistics. As a backup, bring hard copies.
• Grading: The TA and I will assign grades in consultation with each other. The slides you turn in initially and finally will be part of the grade, not just the actual presentation you give.