Final Year Project Presentations - arrangements for EEE
supervised MEng projects
The timetable for all EEE supervised
Final Year Project presentations will be posted separately on the project web pages.
Attendance
All students are expected to attend
all the
presentations in their session (morning AND afternoon). The typical audience
will include at least 10 students and 3 members of staff. Students are
encouraged to invite their friends, industrial sponsors, etc, to attend the presentations.
It will often be possible to field questions from the floor as well as your
assessors.
Guidelines
See the table below for the required
time of your stream's presentations. Note that accurate timekeeping is one of
the assessment criteria. Talks should be aimed at a technical but non-specialist
audience: they should generally contain the following:
An outline of
the task involved together with any background material necessary to appreciate
it and its significance.
A reasoned
explanation of why particular design decisions were made including alternatives
considered.
A clear
statement of what was achieved.
An
appraisal of the project and the conclusions that can be drawn from it.
The lecture rooms
involved are equipped with an overhead projector and blackboard; all rooms will
also be equipped with a projection system for the display of IBM PC screens.
Further questions about this equipment should be addressed to Neil Todd.
The removal of equipment from EEE
laboratories requires approval from the relevant Lab Technician. Note that
working demonstrations are sometimes effective if they work perfectly and are
invariably a disaster if they don’t: if you include a demonstration it is
essential that you rehearse it first to check that it works, and that it does
not consume too much time. The assessment criteria for presentations, given
below, put the emphasis on clarity of presentation and technical content, not
on demonstrations.
Assessment
The presentation contributes 12.5% of the
project mark. This is divided approximately as follows:
50% Content: Clarity & understanding of principles;
Logic of development; Intellectual content; Evidence for conclusions.
30%
Presentation: Introduction;
Structure of development; Clarity of conclusion; Appropriate level of detail;
Emphasis of key points; Fluency; Interesting or dull; Use of slides; Timekeeping.
20%
Questions: Understanding of
questions; Clarity of answers; Honesty; Breadth of knowledge.
Your presentation will be assessed by a mark team including usually your two markers: some of the audience may not be a specialist in the field of your project, but all will be technically competent.
Don't make the mistake of "dumbing down" your presentation. This will annoy even
a non-specialist. Good presentations have introductions, describe background
and motivation, and are well sign-posted, in a way that allows a non-specialist
to enjoy the presentation and understand the gist of its content. Given this
structure, you should make sure that you demonstrate your ability to convey
technical information, however you should be careful
to limit the number of equations that you put on your slides. Mathematical
relationships can usually be better conveyed with graphs than equations.
Presentation length
All presentations have a maximum lengt
Tom
Clarke,