INST 301
Introduction to Information Science
Spring 2016
Assignment P5 - Project Presentation

In this assignment you will prepare and deliver a presentation to your classmates about your project. Your goal is not just to gain experience with presentation, but also to teach your classmates something based on what you have done in your project. Material presented in the project presentation is testable on the final exam.

We have 75 minutes and 12 teams. This means that each team gets 5 minutes for their presentation and one minute to answer questions during the turnover to the next person. The person answering questions CAN NOT be the same as the person setting up and shutting down the presentation. So you don't both need to speak (you can if you want to), but only one of you can answer question (and with one minute there will be only one question.

Perhaps the best rule of thumb for presentations you will ever hear is one minute per slide. Some people spend less time on each slide than that (on average) and some spend more, but until you have become an accomplished presenter you should plan on one minute per slide. So that's rule 1. Five slides. Not 4, not 6. Use PowerPoint to make your slides. Other tools may be snazzier, and you may already know other tools. But we have only 60 seconds between talks, so we're going to stick with PowerPoint. PowerPoint is available free to students for both Macs and PC's from the University's Terpware service.

What to put on your slides is up to you, but the second best rule of thumb you will ever hear is to illustrate your points on your slides, but make your points with your voice. The reason for this is simple -- if we wanted to read it, we would not have you presenting. Edward Tufte claims that powerpoint contributed to the death of seven astronauts. That may be somewhat overstated, but people who stand up and read powerpoint slides have surely put many people to sleep. Don't do that to your classmates.

Okay, what to talk about? Your project, of course. Don't tell us everything -- tell us something. Tell us what you were studying, some technical issues, some social issues, some policy options, and some well supported policy recommendation. You'll note that's five things. Hmmm ... might suggest five slides, and what to talk about in your five minutes! Don't be scattered -- pick a focus, and build around it. Don't talk about both of your policy issues -- pick the one that will grab people (maybe it's patent law on alien worlds?). Here's the final piece of wisdom -- say less well, rather than more poorly. We already know that you know more that you could possibly say in five minutes. Don't take five minutes to prove that to us. Instead, remember this one last pear ow wisdom -- people will only remember one thing you said (if they remember anything at all -- remember, they are seeing 11 of these in just over an hour, and presenting one of them themselves). If they are only going to remember one thing you said, YOU should decide what that is -- not them. In other words, don't give them a smorgasbord and invite them to spend 5 minutes grazing -- give them a story that takes five minutes to tell and that has one punchline.

I'll put at least one of the punchlines on the exam.

One member of your team should upload your slides before class to ELMS. We will present from the ELMS slides so that there will be no temptation to edit slides while other teams are presenting!

Your presentation is not separately graded -- it is a part of the project grade. But the project grade will be recorded in ELMS as your grade for P5. We should have the project grades posted the next day.