CS276 - HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT 4
Due: November 30 (By 11:59pm)
Objective
The goal of this assignment is to have you evaluate other presentations
for what is good and what needs improvement. By focusing on a thorough
assessment, you will be able to provide constructive criticism to the
other groups while improving your own presentation skills.
Criteria
There are currently 13 presentations scheduled. Therefore, for the
12 presentations that are not your own, you should write a paragraph
or two assessing the quality of the presentation and the
quality of the research.
This assessment should have four parts. The first three are focused
on the specific components of the research and the presentation.
- Motivation: the start of the presentation is critical
for several reasons: (1) you need to explain all of the background and
motivation, (2) you need to make the introduction exciting enough
to keep the audience's interest, and (3) you need to slowly introduce
the audience to your speaking style and cadence. You will want to
assess the presentations both for content and style.
- Project Idea: is the project idea interesting, novel,
and worthwhile? Clearly there has to be some intuition about whether
the idea is a good one, but the presenters can also do a good job by
positioning the problem and solution in the context of related work.
- Evaluation: is the evaluation rigorous, thorough, and
convincing? While some of the evaluation for these projects will
be given as future work, the presenters should still describe the
overall evaluation plan and then describe specifically the pieces
they have implemented, and what the evaluation demonstrates.
The fourth part are intangibles. These include mostly generic
presentation style criteria: not loud enough, too slow/fast, the
effectiveness of presentation aids, etc.
Additional Notes
- The assessment of an evaluation is likely to require one to two
paragraphs of text. Keep it as short and to the point as possible
while still including all of the required components.
- All evaluations will be organized by Project Group and posted
on the class web site. Each assessment will be kept anonymous.
Therefore, your assessments should be professional yet honest.
- Try to focus your assessments from the perspective of providing
constructive criticism. Good presentation skills are developed
through practice and feedback.
- Given the required turn-around time on the presentations and
when this assignment is due, you are strongly encouraged to write
your assessments as soon after class as possible. You should take
notes in class and then turn those into paragraphs while the
presentations are still fresh in your mind.
Submission
The assignment should be submitted via email to almeroth@cs.ucsb.edu.
The submission format can be any commonly used format. Keep in
mind that this assignment is due only 13 hours after the last class.
Plan accordingly!