CHEM-465 CHEMISTRY SENIOR SEMINAR Format for Project Presentation  and "Wild Card" Evaluation

Your Audience:

Senior seminar this semester is built around the theme, Getting Serious about Your Future: Chemistry and Biochemistry of Contemporary Issues. In addition to creating a web site devoted to some societal issue for which chemistry and biochemistry may be part of the problem and part of the solution, each student team will make a 15 minute PowerPoint presentation of its findings to the other teams, additional interested students, and "Wild Card" evaluators during November.

Wild Cards:

A "Wild Card" is a person not associated with the course who has been invited by the instructor to help evaluate the presentations and participate in the following discussion on a particular day. The wild cards may be faculty from this department or other departments, citizens from the community with an interest in your topic, graduate students, or virtually anyone (including CEOs of major companies).  The identity of the wild cards will not be announced ahead of time.  While the unannounced presence of distiguished visitors may increase your anxiety (and the instructor's), it also increases the authenticity of the event because in most cases speakers do not  know who will be in their audience.  A well prepared speaker must be prepared to handle probing questions from wild cards.

Organization of the Presentation Schedule:

Teams will be organized into "Groups" of three teams. One team from each Group will be presenting on each of the presentation dates. Students within each Group must evaluate the presentations of other teams in their Group. Thus, during 'Presentation Season', you will either be helping to prepare your team's presentation or evaluating the work of two other teams. You are expected to attend the presentations of teams in the other Groups, including those from the other section of Senior Seminar, but you are not obligated to evaluate their presentations.  Unless certain teams volunteer to present on the early dates, presentation dates will be assigned by the instructor on 27 October. In addition to the instructor, each presentation will be evaluated by at least two "Wild Cards."

Presentation Guidelines:

The following guidelines for Senior Seminar presentations were originally formulated by Drs. Manuel Panar, Hal White, and Murray Johnston. In carrying out this assignment, you will gain valuable experience in making effective oral presentations.

Your team's goal is to persuade you listener that your viewpoint is valid, or, if presenting a balanced viewpoint, that it is based on reliable facts and can be trusted. It is not to impress the audience with the cleverness or originality of your presentation. (We are assuming your audience is either a scientific one or the general public. If you end up in an advertising agency, this may not apply.)

Your team will have 15 minutes for its PowerPoint presentation. Under no circumstances should you exceed this by as much as 15 seconds. A question period following the presentation will be limited to 10 minutes. Questions beyond this point should be met with, "I will be happy to discuss that with you after the class."

Your team will probably decide that 15 minutes is not long enough to make your points. Think again and refine your talk to 15 minutes. Learning to get your ideas and information across in a restricted time is a major lesson of this seminar.

Keep your audience informed of your line of reasoning. Do not spend your first 5 minutes building up background, while leaving your listeners wondering why they should be interested in paying attention.

Speak clearly, projecting your voice to the back of the room. It is surprising how many good presentations are spoiled because the audience could not hear the arguments.

Slides carry information and headings to help the audience follow the presentation. DO NOT put your text on the slides, and then read them.

You can make your presentation from notes which you glance at, but practice keeping your head up, and your words directed to the audience, not to your notes or the screen.

Too much color, and use of graphics, can be distracting to the viewers unless very well done and clearly relevant to the message.

Keep the message of each slide coherent.

A useful approximate rule is to use 15 slides for a fifteen minute talk.

Use graphs rather than tables whenever possible.

Keep the font size appropriate for the room.

For this Seminar, keep the slides simple. Time put into elegant slides may well be wasted, and is better put into improving your message. Use images only if they help make your point.

Do not break copyright laws by using other's images or text without attribution.