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Homework: Dissertation Presentation

There are several milestone due dates, described below

Acknowledgement: This assignment was inspired by the "Dissertationpalooza!" from CS 891 at ODU.

The main goals of this assignment are to:

  • familiarize you with prior work in your research area
  • provide an example of successful PhD dissertations
  • give you practice at presenting others' research

Assignment

Work with your advisor to select an appropriate dissertation. (This is not a suggestion. You must talk with your advisor about your dissertation choice.) Preferably, this should be one from your research group at ODU (ODU-CS theses and dissertations). If your advisor is a new faculty member, this could potentially be their dissertation or one from a comparable research group.

You will read the dissertation and prepare and deliver a 20-25 minute presentation. The original authors had approximately an hour to present their research, you will have much less time (with questions and discussion, the entire presentation should fit into a 30-minute slot). Since you have less than half of the original time, you will need to focus on the research questions, technical highlights, results/evaluation, and the contributions of the dissertation; there will not be time to present the work in its entirety.

Feel free to use figures and tables from the dissertation (be sure to mark their number from the original work), but the slides and text must be your own work – not a simplified version of the original slides. You’re presenting your perspective on their work – not just a slimmed down version of the original presentation. To reiterate, you are not defending the work, you aren't pretending to be the author (so don't say things like "In our work, we did ..."), but you are summarizing the work that the author did.

I will review draft presentations slides and meet with each student via Zoom to provide feedback that you should incorporate into your final presentation.

Online Students: If you can attend class in person on one of the presentation days (tentatively scheduled for Apr 13-22), I would like you to present live. (We will have plenty of room in our assigned classroom for COVID social distancing.) If you cannot attend, you will either have to record yourself giving the presentation or present live via Zoom.

Although the presentations will be given over several class meetings, everyone has the same due date for their final presentation materials. We will work on scheduling the presentation slots later in the semester.

After the submission deadline, I will download all presentations to the classroom computer.

Milestone Deadlines and Submission

Milestone 1: Dissertation Selection

Due: Thursday, February 18, 2021 before class

Work with your advisor to select an appropriate dissertation to read.

Submission:

  • Click on Dissertation Selection under Assignments
  • Under "Assignment Submission", click the "Write Submission" button.
  • Enter the reference line for the dissertation you are presenting, including the link to the dissertation
    Ex: Mat Kelly, "Aggregating Private and Public Web Archives Using the Mementity Framework," PhD thesis, Old Dominion University, August 2019, https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/computerscience_etds/94/
  • Make sure to "Submit" your assignment.

Milestone 2: Draft of Presentation Slides

Due: Tuesday, March 23, 2021 by 11:59pm

Although this says "draft", these slides must be complete, proof-read, and include everything you plan to present. You will modify your slides based on the feedback I provide.

Submission:

  • Click on Draft Presentation under Assignments
  • Under "Assignment Submission", upload (if PPT or PDF) or link to (if Google Slides or Slideshare) your slides
  • Make sure to "Submit" your assignment.
  • Send me an email to schedule an appointment for us to discuss your presentation.

Milestone 3: Final Presentation Slides

Due: Tuesday, April 13, 2021 before class

In addition to your final presentation slides, you must also include a short writeup answering the following questions:

  1. Now that you have read a dissertation, what are some of the major components in a dissertation?
  2. How did reading this dissertation help you understand what might be expected in your own disseration?
  3. Name 3 elements discussed in class that you applied in your presentation.

Submission:

  • Click on Final Presentation under Assignments
  • Under "Assignment Submission", upload (if PPT or PDF) or link to (if Google Slides or Slideshare) your slides
  • Under "Assignment Submission", click the "Write Submission" button.
  • Either directly type in your answers or provide a link to a Markdown file with your answers.
  • Make sure to "Submit" your assignment.