UNIV-1200

How and what will we eat on Mars?

Paper and Seminar Requirements

Scientific paper Usually follow a basic ‘journal article’ structure:

Title Something catchy to get your attention

Authors Who and where

Abstract Summary of the work in the paper

Introduction Background information and rationale for the

experiment(s) performed - the what and why

Methods and What was done and how did they do it?

materials

Results What happened?

Discussion Why did it happen? How does it compare to

our previous knowledge and has the outcome

changed our perceptions on the topic?

Conclusions Summary of main points and what they mean

Assignment 1: paper summary

• Who, what, when, where, why, how?

• I usually start with figuring out the ‘what’ and ‘why’

• Follow typical essay structure:

– introduction

– body

– conclusion

• Use diagrams and pictures where possible!

• Follow university rules regarding referencing and

plagiarism (www.academicintegrity.uoguelph.ca)

Paper grading

Introduction

Your name, date and paper citation correctly

identified

5

Text between 1000 and 1500 words 5

Introduction presents the purpose and objectives

of the author

10

Introduction has sufficient background

information

10

Rubrick adapted from http://gsi.berkeley.edu/teachingguide/grading/science-essay-rubric-vendetti.pdf

Paper grading…

Body & conclusions

Concepts, methods, conclusions presented

accurately

10

Discussion of paper’s arguments is sufficient 10

Identification of strengths and weaknesses

identified, described, and commented on

10

Acknowledgement of the paper’s relevance in the

area of biological life support

10

Paper grading…

Organization and presentation

Paragraphs are clear and focused 10

Overall organization 10

Grammar and spelling 10

Effective Presentations

• What to do and what not to do

• Personal opinion and advice from someone who is the poster child for what not to do =)

Source: xkcd.com

Google: “How to give good presentations”

• Find huge number of hits (61,300,000 295,000,000!)

• Most will tell you similar things, e.g.

Look at your audience

Try to appear relaxed (doesn’t matter if

you are actually relaxed; fake it if you

have to)

Don’t keep your hands in your pockets

Try to vary your tone of voice

Try to look like you are happy to be giving

the presentation

Turn off your cell phone!

Common Suggestions about Slide Format

• Use an easily legible font

• Don’t use an ornate, whimsical, script or comic fonts

• Don’t use less than 32 point font size (this

is 32 point) – But everyone breaks this rule

all the time and sometimes smaller works!

• Don’t use a bright white background

This is white

Black might not work out so well either

Things to Avoid

• Too much text/information per slide

• Font too small

•Font too large • Font colour has insufficient contrast from

the slide background

More Things to Avoid

Distracting slide

background

More Things to Avoid

Overdoing the PowerPoint special effects

It’s too distracting (and annoying)

More Things to Avoid

• Going

crazy

on the

colours

on your

graphs

Subspecies

vulgaris alba rubrum reinhardtii stupidus morestupidus

DE

NS

ITY

(in

div

iduals

/km

2)

0

20

40

60

80

S Sask

N Sask

Fuzzy Grelber (Mammalius imaginarius) SubspeciesDensity in Southern and Northern Saskatchewan

Colour Blindness

• Some people suggest

being careful about

colour schemes or data

points to account for

colour blindness

• May be difficult to

distinguish for some

people

• 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200

women are colourblind

Red-green colour blindness

Blue-yellow/green colour blindness

Source: templatemonster.com

More Things to Avoid

• Going over your allotted time

• Waving the laser pointer all over the screen (or burning out the retinas of your audience)

• Talking to the screen

• Talking too fast, or mumbling

• Having too many slides (rough rule of thumb: number of slides should be similar to number of minutes)

• But the above rule of thumb can be very successfully broken

More Things to Avoid

• Boring the audience

• Meaningless detail is great way to bore the

audience (e.g. telling them that the assay

buffer contained 10 mM MES and 3 mM

sodium borate, and was pH 7.6)

• Or, slide after slide of DNA sequences

• Backing up to earlier slides

MES = 2-(N-morpholino)ethanesulfonic acid (in case you were wondering)

More Things to Avoid

• Over-preparing

• Huge waste of time (you are a busy person and can’t afford to spend weeks preparing for a 12 minute seminar)

• Under-preparing

• Unless you have a superhuman knack for presentations, you can’t put together a competent seminar in the hour before you give the seminar

More Things to Avoid

• Don’t be late for your own presentation

• Be prepared “Oops, I forgot my memory stick!”

• Don’t get flustered over AV difficulties

Be Yourself

• Don’t try to adopt a persona that is not you

• Be yourself, but a polished, professional

and confident-appearing version of

yourself

• With your demeanour you should show the

audience that you are taking this seriously

• As you deliver more presentations, you will

eventually settle into a delivery style that

suits you

Presentation Organization Slide

• Very common

• Unless you have a very unusual presentation, this slide is not necessary

• Audience expects that a scientific presentation will start with some general background info, and then get into the specifics of the work, and end with some overall conclusions

There are individual opinions and

preferences about “good” presentations

• There is no ONE WAY to give an effective

presentation

• But there ARE effective presentations and

there are also ineffective presentations

• Following a certain recipe or set of

guidelines will not guarantee an effective

presentation

Tailor the Presentation to Your

Audience

• One of the most important points

• The Introduction will depend on the level of knowledge of the audience

• Specialist audiences will require a very different introduction than non-specialist audiences

• Things that are obvious to specialists, and don’t need to be mentioned, might not be obvious to non-specialists

Tailoring Your Presentation…

• Explanations about experimental design or

use of certain techniques Again,

depends on the audience

• For non-specialist audiences, more

explanations are needed

• For non-specialist audiences, focus more

on the big picture rather than the nuances

of what you are describing

What the Audience Wants

• The audience wants to learn something; gain a new insight

• Make them feel that attending your presentation was a good use of their time

Going by Gut-Feeling

• If the presentation sucks, you usually know it

• No one needs to tell you that it sucks, or why/how it sucks

• If the presentation is competent, you know that as well (it just “flows”)

• Practice the seminar beforehand to find out the timing

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

• Use graphs instead of tables or text when possible

• Use tables rather than text when possible

• When text must be used, keep the text simple and don’t put huge amounts of text on a slide

Higher Plant Chamber in Barcelona, Spain

Title Slide

• Nature of the title slide depends on the

type of presentation

• Formal conference presentations need a

formal title slide

• For the presentations in this class, show

the title of the paper, authors and your

name

By: Janek Kozicki

Presentation By: Nicole G

High stability ferric chelates:

interacting mechanisms that

affect iron bioavailability

Harold G. Weger1, Jackie Lam2, Nikki

L. Wirtz2, Crystal N. Walker1 and Ron

G. Treble2

1Department of Biology, University of Regina,

Regina, Saskatchewan, S4S 0A2 2Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry,

University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan,

S4S 0A2 Iron-limited chemostat culture

of the unicellular green alga

Chlorella kessleri.

Summary: A Presentation Either

Works or it Doesn’t Work

• But there are many possible ways to make a particular presentation on a particular topic “work”

• And there are many possible ways to make it not work

• Don’t aim to put together the perfect presentation (it doesn’t exist, and opinions will differ)

• Aim to put together a presentation that works, and of which you are proud

Software

• Some ‘free’ alternatives to PowerPoint

• Open Office and Libre Office‘Presentation’ is

available for window$, linux and macs.

• Prezi – a very different idea in presentations

• Google Docs Presentation (?)

Presentation Grading

Student name ___________________

Content 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Structure 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Presentation 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

• You will evaluate each other

• Evaluation forms will be provided for

each presentation

Acknowledgements

• Dr. Harold Weger, University of Regina