WorkInProgressPresentation

=Work-in-progress presentation=

When you prepare to give a presentations (freewriting on your desired impact, designing visual aids, etc.), when you hear yourselves speak your presentations, and when you get feedback, it usually leads to self-clarification of the overall argument underlying your research and the eventual written reports. This, in turn, influences your research priorities for the remaining time. Presentations a little over half way through the project must necessarily be on work-in-progress, so you'll have to indicate where additional research is needed and where you think it might lead you. If there is not time for extensive discussion, the rest of the group should write notes to provide appreciations, suggestions, questions, contacts, and references.

Visual aids, the simplest of which are overhead transparencies, should aid your presentation, not duplicate it. Indeed, use of simple, readily assimilated visuals can allow you to provide a quick overview and essential background for the project so you can use most of your time to focus on the areas in which you need most feedback. Tips (which apply to powerpoint slides as well as overhead transparencies): • Include only key words or prompts to what you're going to say • 15-20 words only on any one visual • Text should be 1/2 inch high or more • Be wary of bullets (except when the topic is a list of items such as these tips). > Although all of the bulleted points may be relevant and interesting the challenge is to give them names and an ordering that conveys a flow so that each point prepares the way for the one that follows. If you are accustomed to making bullet points, ask a peer or your advisor to take notes as you speak the words that link the bullets, then use those notes to rephrase and order the bullets so the flow/logic is evident in the visual, i.e., even without your spoken narrative. • Design your visual aids not on full size sheets, but by printing by hand inside quadrants of a single sheet of paper divided into 4 parts. Then scale up to your actual visual aid.

The Work-in-Progress Presentation is your first opportunity to "GOSP" your audience. Note that the P in GOSP--"Position"--for a work-in-progress presentation may be your plans to find out what you need. In general, think of the talk less in terms of performing to the public and more in terms of getting the help you need from others to make further progress. In that spirit, make sure you allow time to present the //leading edge// of your work even if that means being brief on educating the listeners about the facts you've established.