We’re bearing down on the end of the semester, and coming alarmingly close to when the time will come when presentations are supposed to happen. That will be the last 3 classes of the semester: Tue Apr 20, Tue Apr 27, Thu Apr 29. Each class is 80 minutes long, and we need to get up to 6 people in each day. A bit of quick math says: presentations need to be about 12 minutes long from start to finish.

That’s not very long. Really. It might sound like it, but it really isn’t.

Here’s how the presentations should go. Presume that nobody has read anything specific to your topic (though you can refer to things we’ve talked about in class), and introduce the basic thing you’re looking at. Who are your subjects? What is the question? How are you trying to answer the question? What will the answer to the question tell us more broadly? What have you found to be known about this topic already? What have you found so far? What new questions does it raise? All this should fit into something like 8 minutes, 10 max, so that there’s at least a little bit of a chance for people to ask things. I will be merciless when it comes to time limits.

Also, this is not intended to be a “defense” of your research project, it’s just sharing it with the rest of us. We’re all friends here. Present your project in the way you’d like to see your classmates present their projects. (I will be evaluating your presentation, but not particularly severely, the bulk of the project grade goes with the writeup.)

On Tuesday I want to start firming up the schedule. Please note: Not everyone can go on the last day. It is quite possible that people who get scheduled for the first day (a week from Tuesday, on April 20) will not be completely done with the data collection or analysis. That’s ok, just tell us what you have so far. Still, the best would be for people who have actually gotten their data collected and have looked at it a bit by then to be the ones who go then. So, if you are close and anticipate being at that point, please consider volunteering for the first day. (Going first means you can relax, too, and enjoy the rest of the presentations more!)

I’ll take volunteers for April 20 or April 27 over email starting now, and I’ll fill in the schedule here as I get volunteers. No volunteers for April 29 now, we’ll fight that out in class on Tuesday.

On the question of technology and visual aids: A short handout would be useful, probably. I will print them if you send it to me by about an hour before the class. You can also use the projector with or without the sound. You may have noticed that I have a Mac (with current versions of PowerPoint and Keynote), and the best presentation option would be for me to present it off my computer rather than run the risk of technological delays. To that end, I’d like to have presentations emailed to me by about an hour prior to the class it is needed in, so I can be sure they’re ready and work. If there’s a reason why presenting from my laptop isn’t optimal (and it might not be, sometimes things don’t translate perfectly from Windows), it’s fine to do it from your own, we’ll probably just do yours last. Also, feel free not to project anything as well.