Symposiums

Assignment

The symposiums are a way for team members to become more fluent when talking about their projects, and for all AguaClara students to learn about the work being done on the other sub-teams. The primary goal is to teach the class what you are doing and tie your work into what is being done with AguaClara.

During the mid-semester Monday night lecture, teams will be presenting about their project in a symposium type setting. Each team will give a presentation with interactive components to explain what they have done thus far this semester and their remaining goals as a team.

General Expectations:

Need a Presentation tool
- This will be a PowerPoint presentation using the AguaClara Presentations Template. Your presentation must be uploaded to your team's Wiki page by 6PM on Monday.
- Feel free to bring extra materials (handouts, pieces of your apparatus, your apparatus itself, etc.)
- You will have access to projection equipment in your presentation room.
- Be creative with your additional materials, but whatever you decide to use should clearly show what your team has accomplished this semester and what you plan to accomplish by the end of the semester.
- Make sure that whatever you use is visible and easy to follow.
Each team will make one presentation. It is up to you how would like to split up presentation time but each member of your team should talk for about the same amount of time.
- Time allotted for your presentation: 10 minutes for teams of 3 and less and 15 minutes for teams of 4 and more.
- Make sure you practice the timing of your talks. Once time is up, teams will need to rotate to another station and therefore your presentation will get cutoff.
- Advisors in each room will signal you once you have 1 minute remaining, so be sure to wrap up soon thereafter. You will have time after your set presentation time to field questions from the audience. The time for questions are not factored in to your presentation time.
Your presentation should include...
- Short introduction explaining the importance of your research/design and your goals for the semester
- Explain what you have accomplished so far (make sure to use your visual/demo)
- What are your plans for the rest of the semester?
- Ask questions of your audience. For instance, if you having trouble figuring out why something is going wrong or how to fabricate something ask your audience for their suggestions/recommendations. You may get some really great feedback that will help you solve your problem.
Keep your audience in mind
- Not everyone has taken fluid mechanics, however assume you are speaking to an engineering audience
Great visuals, less text
- What does the text say that you cannot? Try to remove the text and provide an image or a demo that you will explain in words when you present. Short notes can be useful to the audience as well.
- If you have a table, what point do you want the table to make? Does it do that? Would another visual be better (i.e. a graph)?
- If you have a graph, the audience should be able to look at it without explanation and understand where we should be focused (but not necessarily the interpretation or conclusions from it). It should have readable axis labels, a title, appropriate units, and grid lines if needed.
Equations
- They may be intimidating and even unnecessary. Can you get away with naming the equation and explaining what it calculates? Or do we need to see the variables behind it?

Grading

Symposiums will be graded by your Research Advisor based on the Presentation Grading Rubric.

The symposiums are meant to be fun and informative and will give Monroe and your team members a good idea of how well you understand and can communicate about the work you are doing. All team members must participate.

Whether this means arriving early or setting up your station the day before, please make sure that your station is set up prior to the beginning of class.

Your team will receive full credit for the presentation if all team members participate in speaking, good visuals are used to clearly convey the concepts your team is working with, you try to follow the suggestions posted on this page and you respect the time limits.

Wiki Organization

By 6PM on the day of symposiums, everyone should upload their symposium presentation to their wiki page under the Midterm tab. Please refer to the Wiki Guide (which is linked on the syllabus) on how to do this.