COMP80122 Slides and Presentations Carole Goble | Uli Sattler - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Slides and Presentations

Carole Goble | Uli Sattler

School of Computer Science University of Manchester

COMP80122

Slides are available at 


http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~sattler/teaching/COMP80122/index.html

Welcome to COMP80122

Semester 1

P1: P2: 
 COMP80131 Jon, Simon

Semester 2

P3: 
 COMP80142 Bijan, Jon P4: 
 COMP80122 Carole, Uli Week 7

Seminar

Week 8

Sem & Prezies

Easter Break Research Symposium

Week 7

• Disc. & 


Prezies

Week 8

Your Prezies

Week 8

Your Prezies

April 23-25

Your Deliverables for COMP80122

• 1. Active participation

• 2. Critiques of Research Symposium Presentations

• 3. A15 minute presentation



 plus various little exercises, tasks, …

Week 7

Seminar

Week 8

Sem & Prezies

Easter Break Research Symposium

Week 7

• Disc. & 


Prezies

Week 8

Your Prezies

Week 8

Your Prezies

April 23-25

Research Symposium

• April 23-25

– see http://studentnet.cs.manchester.ac.uk/pgr/symposium/

• Great place to learn about

– school – our school’s research – research in Computer Science – other PhD students

• Great place to think about communication of research

– clarity: what makes you “get” what has been done – story lines … – boredom, effect, ... – presentations – slides

Deliverable 1

• during the whole seminar, in particular the discussion
• f fellow students’ presentations you
• are present
• participate actively

• we’ll clarify this later

Deliverable 2

• attend all presentations of the Research Symposium
• You are assigned 10 presentations; for each

– give a 2-3 sentence summary of its contents and – write a critique: what was good, what could have been better – taking into account all 3 aspects of a presentation

• storyline
• slides
• presenter
• submit all your summaries and critiques via easychair

– your reviews will be anonymous and fed back to presenters – we will discuss these on May 9th

• we’ll clarify this later

Deliverable 3

• you will give a 15 minute presentation
• about your research
• to a small group of ~13 fellow participants
• we discuss what
• worked well
• can be improved
• Later today, we
• organise you into groups
• start scheduling your presentations
• First presentations:
• Thursday, March 21st

Central thoughts about presentations

Most important features of a presentation?

Technical Contributions Impressive Results Confident Presenter Professional Slides Entertaining Delivery Clear Delivery Good Structure

A Good Presentation is…

• interesting

– tells something new & why we should care

• clear

– story line: start, middle, end – follow-able – on the right level of abstraction 
 for the audience

• articulate

– thought through – well prepared…

• right for the audience

kuweight64.blogspot.com/2011/04/quote-for-today.html

The wider view: Communication

…of your research:

• Does it matter?
• Do you need to be able to communicate your contributions?

– Results can speak for themselves!

A Blunt Answer: Your Viva!

The examiners may recommend the award if they are satisfied that the thesis is satisfactory in every way and that:

• the candidate possesses an appropriate knowledge of

the particular field of learning within which the subject of the thesis falls;

• the research which is reported in the thesis

contributes a substantial addition to knowledge;

From: Examination of Doctoral Degrees Policy June 2017

Slightly Sharper Answer: Conferences

• Hopefully, you will present your work at conference/workshop
• Great opportunity to

– travel – meet colleagues – network – get feedback

Discuss:

• If you understand X, then you can explain X

– well – to everybody – at any length

Corollary: Inability to explain shows lack of 
 understanding Caveat: Being good at explaining is a skill that takes practise

Communication of CS Research

…

?

• A presentation is a monologue with
• no/little space for
• questions
• clarifications
• explanations
• therefor requires
• thought
• preparation

The Three Aspects

The speaker

• body language

– focus

• preparedness
• voice

– volume – speed – clarity

• nerves
• ...

The story

• story line
• clarity
• level
• timing
• use of terminology
• ...

The slides

• bullet lists
• graphics
• fonts
• highlights
• ...

Effects on you/audience by choices to these?
 What was helpful to get message across?

Aspect 1: the story line

Good Preparation

• is a duty to the audience

– don’t make a group of (influential?) people suffer

• makes you more confident
• requires good conceptualization of your work

– might even provide new insight into your work

• takes a looooong time to design:

– start well in time, i.e., weeks before – iterative through different versions:

• make slides
• practise
• think & discuss
• …start again

• Setting the scene:

– what kind of problem is addressed? – why is that interesting/relevant?

• Focus:

– your Research Hypothesis/Question?

• Methodology/approach/work done:

– what have you done/are you doing?

• Context:

– how does this relate to other people’s work?

• Contributions made:

– what is the outcome of the work done? – what are the new insights gained? – how do these answer research hypothesis/question?

• Outlook/next steps/open questions?

Storyline: relevant questions

Running example At right level/enough time

Two approaches to presentation design

• iterative:
• 1. make slides
• 2. practise
• 3. think & discuss

➡ …start again until tired/ happy

• top down:
• 1. gather points to make
• 2. gather terms to define
• 3. ponder whether these are

complete

• 4. arrange in an order
• 5. ponder whether this is

good order/narrative

• 6. make slides
• 7. practise
• 8. think & discuss

➡ …improve

Discuss: which is more efficient?

Preparing a Presentation

Think about:

• who is your audience?
• who are you?
• short memory of audience!
• what do you want them to take home?
• how much time do you have?

– rule of thumb: 2 min per slide – even if it hurts: you need to leave out certain

• aspects of your work
• details of your work
• what technical devices do you have/need?

Let’s try this out (20 mins)

• Spend 3 minutes to sketch out a suitable storyline to tell

– a fellow CS PhD student – about your research – in 2-3 minutes (a long elevator pitch)

• Build groups of 3 students who don’t know each other

– shuffle around

• Tell each other your storylines
• All: discuss

Coursework for Thursday

Make a

• outline of your presentation

– following our skeleton above – with title slides and – core concepts/slogans per slide

• list of your terminology

– specialist terms that you need in your presentation

• suitable running example
• Roughly 1 page
• Bring this on Thursday and we’ll discuss

the day after tomorrow

Aspect 2: the speaker

• first thoughts

The Speaker - Stage Presence

• Stage presence, body language, voice,…

– give context/mode, e.g.,

• surprise
• slog
• hard work

– help audience follow talk – support understanding – can make a talk

• entertaining
• enjoyable

– or

• annoying
• hard work
• boring
• impossible to understand

Discuss: presenting is a performance 
 that can be trained!

People and sites mentioned

• Videolectures for numerous recordings of presentations

– http://videolectures.net/

• Dave Gorman for great use of slides

– http://www.davegorman.com/

• Hans Rosling for talking nicely & clearly with a foreign accent 


and for some more examples of – good use of graphics – great entertainment – great communication of tricky, technical statistics! – e.g., https://www.ted.com/talks/ hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen

Organisation Part 1

Deliverable 1

• during the whole seminar, in particular the discussion
• f fellow students’ presentations you
• are present
• participate actively


Make sure you’ve signed the attendance sheet During your presentations, we will all give feedback 
 (directly verbally & via those Feedback Notes)

Deliverable 2

• attend all presentations of the Research Symposium
• You are assigned 10 presentations; for each

– give a 2-3 sentence summary of its contents and – write a critique: what was good, what could have been better – taking into account all 3 aspects of a presentation

• storyline
• slides
• presenter
• submit all your summaries and critiques via easychair

– your reviews will be anonymous and fed back to presenters – we will discuss these on May 9th

• we’ll clarify this later

In preparation to this, we will email you

• from easychair
• ask you to become a PC member of UoMRS2019
• follow instructions
• submit your 10 critiques there
• following the Feedback Notes
• these will be shared anonymously with presenters

Deliverable 3

• you will give a 15 minute presentation
• about your research (PhD, previous, Tichy study)
• to a small group of ~13 fellow participants
• we discuss what
• worked well
• can be improved
• Later today, we
• organise you into groups
• start scheduling your presentations
• First presentations:
• Thursday, March 21st

You will

• attend all and only your group’s presentations in
• ~4 sessions of ~2hours each
• give your presentation there

We will now start with

• splitting you into groups
• C1, C2, P

, U1, U2

• finding
• presentation order for each group
• some additional time slots for
• C1
• C2

Coursework for Thursday

Make a

• 1. outline of your presentation

– following our skeleton above – with title slides and – core concepts/slogans per slide

• 2. list of your terminology

– specialist terms that you need in your presentation

• 3. suitable running example
• Roughly 1 page
• Bring this on Thursday and we’ll discuss

the day after tomorrow