Presentations and Reports

Goal: to Communicate

Both presentations and reports should have a purposeto informto convince

The content should support that purpose

Format for communicating

Introduction: Tell the audience what you are going to sayPurpose of talkOrganization

Content: Tell the audience what you want them to know

Conclusions: Tell the audience what you said

Before you start writing

Allow yourself time to think about what you want to saywrite down any thoughts you have about

things you want to say

Do any necessary research in advanceyou may need time to follow up on details

Make an outlineThink about who your audience is

Presentation Tips

Visual aids should supplement the presentation.The medium is not the message

Start with ideasUse visual aids to reinforce themLimit text in slidesUse slides for pictures and graphs which

can't be easily put into words

Design Issues

Using PowerPoint does not automatically make your presentation good

Each slide should make a pointMake your slides easy to read

Use reasonably big fonts

32 point28 point

24 point20 point

16 point

It needs to be readable by everyone in the audience

Limit amount of text on slide

Don’t make your bullets too long; the audience won't have time to read the whole thingConsider handouts for large amounts of text

Short bullets can be read quicklyEverything doesn't have to be on the slideYou can elaborate as you speak

Don't put too many on one slide

Use Color Carefully

Contrast too high is jarringtoo low makes it hard to read

Complementary colors

Special effects get old fast

Thisanimationdoes notreallyadd anything usefulto the presentation

Some references

PowerPoint Presentations: The Good, the Bad and the Uglyhttp://www.shkaminski.com/Classes/Handou

ts/powerpoint.htm

Is PowerPoint Evil?Wired Magazine, September 2003, page 112,

118Computer July 2004, page 100

Reports

You need to write your report in a format suitable for a journal or conference publication

Format for submission to ACM journalshttp://www.acm.org/publications/panel/subm

issionTemplates available for LaTex and Microsoft

Word

laTex

A page formatting language commonly used for scientific papersBased on Tex which was created by

computer scientist Donald Knuth

kile provides a user interface for creating and viewing laTex documents

Rubrics

Rubric used to evaluate reports and presentations are in handouts directoryhttp://cs.boisestate.edu/~tcole/cs498/spr09/h

andouts/

We use these rubrics to assess how well students are learning communication skillsThis course is being assessed this semester