Presentation

Complete by: Thursday 5 Dec. by 10:55am

You will prepare a 3-5 minute “elevator pitch” video presentation about your project for your classmates. The goal of this video is not to summarize the entire content of your project, but rather to explain to your audience your chosen data set, the questions you have, and the approaches you plan to take it to it, in a way that will generate interest and allow others to offer suggestions.

Specifically, your video should meet the following guidelines:

Audience: Your audience is the other students in this class (not just me!). Remember that they don’t know anything about your data or your research questions yet. The goal of this presentation is to explain to them what you’re trying to find out, why it matters to you, and how you will answer your questions.

Content: Your presentation should not attempt to be a summary of your final project report. For one thing, you probably haven’t written the whole thing yet! You also shouldn’t simply read your introduction or your conclusion. This presentation should be based on content that addresses three main questions:

1. What data set are you investigating, why is it important, and what questions about it are you exploring?
2. What are the one or two most interesting things that you learned while completing this project so far?
3. What are the next steps you plan to take and why are these the right steps?

Your content must reflect the expected knowledge of your audience. This means choosing your words carefully and defining technical terminology (though for this context, informal or intuitive definitions can be acceptable so long as they are not incorrect or misleading).

Format: Your video must be at least three minutes and may not be longer than five minutes. Note that this means that you can, and must, practice your presentation to ensure it meets these guidelines. You will make your video available through Microsoft Stream by uploading a video in a format such as an mp4 or other Stream compatible file format. Details about submitting your video are provided below.

You will be assessed on the content of this video and how well it addresses the Content requirements laid out above in an Audience aware manner. You will not be assessed on the production quality, so long as the audio and video are clear. Your video may simply be a recording of you talking taken through your webcam or phone camera. You may also provide an audio track over visuals if you prefer. However, your goal is to be compelling to a general student audience in an “elevator pitch” style, so do not narrate over a traditional PowerPoint with titles, bullet points, etc.

Once videos are posted, you’ll be expected to watch your classmate’s videos and prepare to discuss them during our class’s final exam time. More information on this step coming later.

How to Submit a Video

• Please submit videos to the OneDrive folder for our class (there is a link to the folder on Sakai).
• You can record the video directly in Microsoft Stream or upload a compatible file to Stream/OneDrive.
• The video will need to be in a compatible format: .mp4 is the most common, but .flv, .mxf, .gxf, .mpg, .wmv, .asf, .avi. wav, and .mov would also work.
• You MUST click on your video to make sure it plays properly. You are responsible for ensuring that your video is posted on time and that it works when your classmates attempt to watch it.

Responding to Videos

In addition to making a video presentation, you will watch and respond to the videos made by your peers. Before the final exam session (12 Dec.), you will watch all the videos. After watching a video, you will write down the following for each one.

1. One substantive similarity between the presenter’s project and your own.
2. One question you have about the project.
3. One idea or suggestion you have for the presenter as they finish their project.

Bring these similarities, questions, and suggestions with you to class, and we will use them as the basis to discuss all the projects. When class is over, you can post your three items as a comment attached to your classmate’s video on Stream. I’ll read over each response and will include this as part of your presentation grade.

Remember: the best comments are ones that are substantive and move the conversation forward. So not just “We are both working on golf data,” but “In my project, I found that one challenge with golf data was that it had mostly quantitative variables. You’re dealing with a similar challenge.” And not just “What do you plan to do next?” but “When you model your data with a random forest classifier, do you plan to limit the size of your decision trees?” These comments can be genuinely helpful feedback for your classmates, so give the feedback that you would like to receive!