Project Presentation Guidelines

 PROJECT PRESENTATION GUIDELINES

This handout is intended to let you know what we expect to see in your week 10 presentations.

 Required elements

  • Your presentation should be 15 minutes long with time (5 minutes) for questions afterward.

  • Your presentation should be a polished, carefully planned performance.

  • Follow the outline included in this document.

  • Include a short performance of some kind: a skit, a reading, a demonstration of a program, a powerpoint presentation with screen shots or images, etc.

  • Each member of your group (if your project is a group project) must play a significant role in the presentation.

  • If you are using the projection monitor (i.e., a computer to present), come to the room where the presentation is to be held 15 minutes early to upload the presentation to the computer in that room.  You should verify ahead of time that your presentation will run on that computer;  for example, some animations developed on a Mac will not run on a PC and vice versa.  You can use a thumb drive and the program fileshare as a backup, for the file(s) you will need.  If you plan to have a live demo (and thus need software installed), you will need to coordinate with your project faculty to make sure your own computer can be setup to project properly.


Project Presentation Outline

Your presentation outline should address these topics, and proceed in this order:

  • Introduction – summarize your project’s purpose and platform

  • Goals (Objectives) & Constraints – related programs/ projects / apps that you knew of going into the project or that you discovered while working on your project. What were the limitations going in.

  • Ethics (If applicable) – Any ethical concerns?

  • Challenges – Both expected and encountered

  • Demo – Show us something of your project. It doesn’t have to be an application. It could be a handout.

  • Accomplishments/What you learned – Which objectives did you meet? Which ones weren’t you able to meet in the time provided? How is your project or what you learned important?

  • Future Work – Will you continue with your project in any form? If so, how?

  • Leave time for questions


Tips on Giving Good Presentations

  • Practice ahead of time. It’s surprising how quickly time can go by; going through your presentation a few times beforehand will help you to be clear about how long each part will take and, naturally, will help you to work out the kinks.

  • Start with an outline and end with a conclusion. At the beginning of your presentation, let your audience know what to expect; at the end, concisely review what you’ve done.

  • Be confident; speak clearly.

  • Maintain eye contact with the audience. We don’t want to watch you read your notes to us

  • Use visual aids! Even simple visual aids will help keep your audience’s attention and will help keep your talk moving along. At a minimum, it’s a good idea to have a separate visual for each segment of your presentation. Whenever possible, show an example in addition to (or instead of) telling it.

  • Consider using handouts. Handouts are a great way to show your audience detailed information that doesn’t work well on the screen or blackboard; if you want to write a lot of information on the board, a handout may be a better alternative. If you do make handouts, remember to account for the time it will take to pass them out.

  • Plan for what to do if time runs short. It happens all the time, so be ready – that way you won’t waste more time being flustered if it happens to you.