Department of Computer
Science Dr.
Andrea F. Lobo
Presentation
Preparation Guidelines
Welcome
back and congratulations on your successful internship experience!
We
are now ready to begin the next phase: Presentations.
0. What
You will deliver a 15-minute presentation of your final report at a seminar. The seminar is open to the university community. The typical attendee is a CS student or faculty member.
Your
Computer Field Experience presentation will summarize your internship
experience, show off one or two interesting technical details, and disseminate information
about your internship company to future interns. Field Experience students are
required to deliver a presentation and to attend the presentations of other
students in the course.
1. Why
This
component of the course will help you develop your written and verbal
communications skills. The professor will help each student prepare an
effective presentation. Your presentation will provide you with the opportunity
to describe your work to the CS faculty and receive technical feedback.
Additionally, it will provide helpful information to future
interns.
2.
When
The
presentations are scheduled for the university-wide open periods from 1:45-3:00 on Fridays 11/6,
11/13 and 11/20.
We
will have four 15-minute presentations each day. Please let me know which slot you prefer as
soon as possible (my experience with this course is that earlier is better).
Please
email me (lobo@rowan.edu) right away with
your choice of slot, and continue reading.
4.
How
Firstly, you must choose one (or two if you are registered for the 6 credit version of the course) interesting/representative technical detail to impress the crowd with what you know! The professor must approve your technical detail two weeks before your presentation is scheduled, before you start preparing your slides. Please contact the professor to discuss your technical detail via email (lobo@rowan.edu), phone (x3815), or in person (preferably during office hours).
You will need to prepare slides for your presentation. Please feel free to follow this broad-stroke presentation outline:
Slide 1: Title page
Slide 2: Contents
Slide 3: The company (and site) that you worked for
Slide 4: The group that you worked with (mission, number of people, atmosphere)
Slide 5: The projects that you worked on and what you did
Slide 6: One project (details of the project that your technical detail comes from)
Purpose, history/evolution, current version, current issues, platform, staff, your role
Slide 7: The technical detail
Slide 8: The technical detail (continued… this is usually a good place for a handout, demo, or etc.)
Slide 9: Summary of your experience
What you learned, what turned out to be important, helpful things that you knew beforehand,
would you recommend this company to future interns, who should resumes be sent to, etc
The slides are typically displayed in front of the audience but their real (secret) purpose is to help you stay on track during your talk. You will not be reading from them, so they do not need to contain complete sentences; bullets with phrases are fine. Most students use PowerPoint or something similar to make slides that are easy to change and read.
The first draft of your slides is likely to contain too many slides and be too wordy (this is common, and the professor will help you correct it). Do not spend any time making the first draft of your slides look beautiful (because they are going to change a lot). Your focus for the first draft should be on getting the content into bullets and preparing materials (handout, demo, or etc) for your technical detail.
You must discuss a first draft of your complete talk with the professor at least one week before your presentation date. It is very likely that the professor will recommend a large number of changes to your first draft. You must incorporate these changes into your presentation and discuss the next draft of the presentation with the professor. Some students need to go through several iterations of this process before their talk is ready to be presented to an audience. A student who is not prepared in advance will not be permitted to deliver his/her presentation (the risk of embarrassment is too large).
5. Evaluation
The effectiveness of each presentation will be assessed using the departmental rubrics for effective technical presentations. These are available through the Current Students link of the department web page (http://elvis.rowan.edu/compsci/assessment/Rubrics/RUBRICS_Obj6A_TechPresentation.doc).
Additionally, presentation grades will be based on:
A student who is not permitted to deliver a presentation will receive a grade of 0 for this portion of the course.