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 three class periods mid-semester, teams will be presenting about their project in a symposium type setting. Each team will have their own station where they will present and answer questions from the other teams as they rotate through the stations.

In a short

General Expectations:

1. Standard formatting
   • Use this template.
2. Great visuals, less text
   • What does the text say that you cannot? Try to remove the text and provide an image that you will explain in words when you present. Short notes can be useful to the audience as well.
   • If you have text with numbers, can you make it into a table? If not, can you include an image with the text to help explain? Can you include a picture and say the words without writing them? If your text is too small, move some to the next slide and include the image again.
   • 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.
3. 5 minutes per person presenting plus 5 minutes for an introduction
   • This is a maximum, but each team member should speak for approximately the same amount of time
   • Keep in mind, there are 11-15 people each class (55-75 minutes of a 75 minute class), so you may be allowed to go a little long, but eventually you will be cut off
4. 18 pt font
   • This is a minimum; bigger is better.
5. Spell check is your friend, and also your enemy
   • Sometimes, it will not catch errors if your mistyped word is also a word
6. Keep your audience in mind
   • Not everyone has had fluid mechanics, however assume you are speaking to an engineering audience
7. 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?
8. Practice at least once

Grading

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

This semester we are enforcing teach-ins time limits. Please arrive early the day of your presentation to load your presentation on the class computer so we can start class on time.

Your team will receive full credit for the teach-in 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.