196
Talk about the work. Stick to the facts.
Clearly and bluntly stating the limitations of a result is fine, but criticism of a researcher during a research talk is completely inappropriate. Your expression of surprise could be taken as criticism of either the researcher's ethics or their competence, neither of which is appropriate to air in front of a ...
184
Research in the field of multimedia learning suggests that in most cases, "people learn more deeply from graphics and narration than from graphics, narration, and onscreen text". This is known as the redundancy principle.
Previous research has shown students learn better from multimedia
lessons containing graphics and narration than from graphics,
...
159
Who presents a work should not affect its authorship.
Authorship is determined by the contribution to the publication. That work is complete at the time when the publication is accepted and the camera-ready is submitted. Now, it is entirely reasonable (and in fact common) for a paper to be presented by somebody other than the first author, and it's quite ...
158
You wrote:
Students need the presentations to review
Back when I was your age (of course I have no idea of your age but I am guessing you are a traditional undergraduate student), we had to take notes using these two antique tools called pen and paper.
I don't think even one of my professors gave me anything, other than pausing so I had time to write ...
132
I agree with you. I feel the request to put your salary on a slide (on the first slide, no less!) is rather unexpected, and quite frankly does not speak highly about the professionalism of your contact. I would decline this, for multiple reasons:
Your salary is nobody's business. Not sure what more there is to say about this.
Students are, for the largest ...
128
TL;DR: If in doubt, leave it out.
In talks, avoid anything that can offend or be misunderstood, especially if you do not know your audience. It is ok to make self-deprecating jokes, but you want to keep the atmosphere somewhere between serious to light (depending), but outside the sentiment of sadness or anger if you do not have political ambitions. Your "...
128
Put the slides that contain the proofs after the last slide and have links on the relevant slides so you can jump to the proof slide and back to the next one.
That way no-one will know if you skip the proofs, but they could see you click the link to jump to a proof if you have the time.
109
If somebody asks a dumb question, they're not going to feel good about the interaction whatever happens. If possible, get them back on the right track but avoid saying anything that could be interpreted as sarcasm and move on as quickly as possible.
The most likely thing is either that the questioner has missed something obvious or misunderstood something ...
101
Yes, it is appropriate to ask the questioner to repeat the question, prefaced by:
"I'm sorry but I didn't understand the question. Can you repeat it or rephrase it?"
If you still don't understand it, you might ask someone else in the audience to restate it or rephrase it.
Some people at academic conferences are not good at asking clear, direct ...
93
I'm constantly being asked questions that will be answered later in the slides.
You have to understand that this is a great problem to have. There is nothing worse than giving a presentation and facing a bunch of blank stares. Questions mean that
People actually understand what you're talking about.
They care enough about your idea to actually ask.
The ...
88
The last slide will typically be seen for some minutes after you finished talking – until you jump to some other slide for addressing a question. This is something that you should use. If you ended your talk with a summary (which is a good thing in most cases), leaving that slide gives the audience opportunity to reflect on your talk, remember what they ...
86
When I give talks in similar situations, I typically assume that at least some of the audience members will be unfamiliar with much of what I think of as basic. Your job is to "remind" them, without spending excessive time on the topic. A good place to use this technique is with definitions. For instance: "... a polynomial, for example 3x4-5x2+2x+6." (...
86
The first thing to note here is that sleeping in such situations is often not a voluntary action, but a physiologically unavoidable response to the situation the body is in - many people die every year after falling asleep at the wheel of a car. I don't think you'd describe the results of that on other people in the car as "rude". In general, if you are in ...
84
You can use images showing up in Google Search if and only if the license allows for it. Therefore, you might be interested in Advanced Google Image Search, where you can search by copyright status. More information about the Usage rights search can be found here.
For example, here are freely useable images searching for "Mars". Notice how many of them ...
83
I think there are basically two cases here:
The student is presenting or leading discussion on your work as part of a "journal club" sort of series, and the abstract is your abstract because they're talking about your paper.
The student is baldly and ridiculously plagiarizing.
I think a good way to approach this is to assume case #1, and make contact with ...
79
My attitude to life is to spare my mental capacities to things I can affect and change. Yes, it is annoying to see people at a workshop not paying attention. No, there is nothing I can do in the moment that would (i) change their behavior, while (ii) not make me look petty.
So, disengage from these feelings. Focus on those members of your audience who pay ...
76
Years ago, I transcribed raw film footage to earn a little extra money. These transcriptions had to be verbatim, with all the ums, ahs, stuttering, etc. included. It's surprisingly difficult to do a verbatim transcription, because there is a strong tendency for listeners to hear what is meant, rather than what is actually said. We transcribers had to listen ...
75
I'll offer a dissenting point of view.
I often use my mobile device (smartphone, laptop, whatever) during a talk - because I'm taking notes on it!
I used to write my notes on paper, then transcribe them to my giant brain dump TXT file (very easy to search through, which is why scanning is not a solution)... until I noticed that I always put off the ...
answered Aug 19 '15 at 18:04
S. Kolassa - Reinstate Monica
27.6k9 gold badges97 silver badges143 bronze badges
72
I definitely hear where you are coming from.
In my modest opinion, a good conference talk is not necessarily the one that lets me understand the technical contribution (I can read the paper for that), but the one that lets me understand
The importance and/or hardness of the problem studied
What were the key new ideas
Why they worked and when can I expect ...
71
First, some conferences have really strict timing and you will be given no extra time.
Second, if there is important slide or two, just do it. But make sure that you only slightly extend your time (e.g. 10%). If you are going to extend it by 50%, or 200% (I saw that, and I was pissed at both the speaker and even more - the chair for allowing that) - please, ...
70
When I attend talks where the quality of the presentation is poor, I like to use it as an opportunity to learn about what not to do in a presentation.
I have an ongoing list of "things not to do in a presentation", with examples from talks I've attended. I just take out the list and add to it whenever I attend one of these presentations. I find it helpful ...
69
Firstly, I should note that the examples you give are certainly somewhat agressively formulated (more so than would be common in my field), but not in themselves invalid questions. It is certainly "allowed" to be critical of the presented work, and there is nothing the session chair can or should do about this.
As a speaker, it always helps to think in ...
69
@Patricia asks what happens if a student is not able to take notes and think at the same time.
If the student has a disability that prevents note taking (say for example, they are blind or they broke their arm), then in the United States the university will normally provide a note taker (usually another student in the course). The student will of course ...
68
There are two ways to interpret the issue that is being raised. One is that the people simply have accents and not completely correct grammar in spoken English... but not to the point that it seriously impedes intelligibility. The other is that their English is so poor that it does greatly impede intelligibility.
The former is of little consequence, of ...
67
Another alternative I have tried recently is putting thumbnails of all the previous slides on it:
It's just a recent experiment, though; I don't have enough data to tell if it's the best last slide. Apart from the eye-candy, I think it can be useful as a pseudo-summary if your slides are sufficiently recognizable (for instance, if they have pictures).
For ...
66
I am a student and I much prefer lecturers who write on the board than the ones who use slides.
Profs using slides generally go into loop mode where they have the objective of going through all the slides before the end of the class. As such, profs tend to go in a very fast pace.
Writing on the board brings some dynamism to the lectures. The lecturer tends ...
66
When this happens to me, I just describe it as "work in progress" or a "research attempt" and present what I can with what I've got. What's wrong with that? That's how research works.
"...hasn't panned out like I hoped it would when I accepted the talk." You can say this during your talk, and explain why it didn't pan out, and ask the audience if they ...
65
If you want a short and binary answer, it is likely yes — keeping a hand in a pocket during the presentation is not the best habit, because:
You lose yourself a chance to use that hand for communicating with the audience via gestures.
Your body language and posture is more likely to be perceived as you can't be bothered with what you are doing.
...
64
I've seen this before and it can work very well.
Your only task in the one minute slot is to convince people that they should come and see your poster. Say what you've been doing and why it's interesting. You could use your abstract as a starting point but don't just read it out. Keep the slide really simple with the paper title and authors and a single, ...
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