Turn in your presentation using this form.
When presenting a reading, your primary goals are to briefly introduce each reading; and then encourage its discussion, focusing particularly on its strengths ("pros") and weaknesses ("cons"). You do not need to master all the highly technical content of the paper, I will provide additional explanations as needed in class.
When introducing the reading, you should sketch:
- The problem: the basic problem that the authors are trying to solve
- The basic idea: the high level approach the authors take to solve this problem
When encouraging the reading's discussion, you should consider its:
- Strengths ("pros"): How important is the problem? How well did they solve it? How easy is their solution to use?
- Weaknesses ("cons"): How unimportant is the problem? What elements of the problem are unsolved? How hard is their solution to use?
When preparing your presentation, read the posted reactions of your fellow class members to see how they understood the paper, what questions they had, and their thoughts about its pros and cons. Encourage them to discuss their reactions in discord and in class.
A good leadership of discussion will also:
- Walk through the imagery: these days almost every paper has images, and these images can be a very good way of illustrating the above points.
- Show a couple demos or videos, if available: again, a very good way of illustrating the above points.
Often we will have two presentations on a reading. Both presentations should cover the problem and basic idea; two perspectives are valuable. However, one presentation should focus more on strengths ("pros"), the other more on weaknesses ("cons"). It isn't required, but when two are presenting on the same reading, feel free to communicate with each other, so that your presentations are complementary.
Both introduction and discussion should complete within 10 minutes. You do not need to discuss every detail of the paper.
Here are some good presentations from previous years. Because they from previous years, they are a bit long (we had more than 10 minutes, and less focus on strengths and weaknesses.
