Assignment 9: Present a paper

Before you begin

Description

For this assignment you will pretend that you volunteered to present a paper as part of a reading group or lab meeting, and you will prepare slides and present the paper by making a video. This can be the paper you read in previous assignments or a different one. Assume your audience is a group of other undergrad and grad student researchers with interests in the same research area, who might or might not have read the paper before they show up to your presentation. A few notes about your presentation:

  • You will use Google Slides so that you are able to easily share and receive feedback on your slides.

  • Remember the advise to focus on the narrative first. Include your narrative in the "Presenter Notes", either in bullet point form or in actual text that you might read.

  • Aim for a 5-10 minute presentation.

  • Think about ways to add more visual / auditory media to your talk by digging around supplementary materials. Think about someone in the audience who has already read the same paper - can your talk add something for them?

  • At the end of your talk add one slide with a few 'discussion questions' - if this talk was part of a reading group (50-60 minute session) and your talk was the first 5-10 minutes of giving an overview of the paper, what would you like everyone to discuss for the rest of the time in the context of this paper? You can revisit the questions you came up with in Assignment 5.

Since it is unfeasible to give everyone the real experience of giving a live talk in front of an audience, we will instead practice giving a talk by making a video recording on Zoom. This will resemble the experience of presenting a paper as part of a reading group that meets virtually. Before you record:

  • You are welcome to request feedback from the instructors to improve your slides and refine your narrative.

  • Be sure to write bullets of talking points, or a full narrative script before practicing.

  • Be sure to practice by doing a dry run before recording.

  • Time yourself during practice. If you are below 5 minutes or above 10 minutes, you might need to revise your narrative and slides.

  • No need to try to make the video perfect. It's totally fine if you stumble in the middle, just say something like "oops, sorry, <correction as needed>" and keep recording.

Submission

This assignment is due on December 5, 2022 Monday 11:59pm.

Here is what you need to submit on Canvas here:

  • Title, author, venue, and year of the paper; link to a PDF

  • Link to a Google Slides slide deck with the sharing set as "Anyone in this group with this link can comment" for UW Computer Science & Engineering

  • A link to a shared video on Google Drive or Youtube that the instructors can watch on a browser, without needing to download the video.