Building Successful Online Communities (Spring 2021)/Final presentation

Between June 3-5, we will be hosting a virtual presentations session. Please read the information below carefully.

General Information

You won't be surprised to hear that I'm expecting that the final presentations will present your final project for the class. I'm truly not expecting anything extra out of these presentations which is why I've listed the expectations for the presentations and paper in the same section of the syllabus. The paper and the presentation are just two opportunities to showcase the same project. Details about the expectations for final projects are on the relevant section of the syllabus.

If the class were happening in person, everybody would be expected to give feedback during a class session devoted to that. The sessions will be held entirely online asynchronously in a Microsoft Teams channel.

I expect everybody to spend about around 90 minutes participating in these sessions over a 48 hour period from Thursday 11:59pm through Saturday 11:59pm although I'm hoping most people will be able to finish giving feedback on Friday.

Structure

The basic structure is going to be as follows:

• Everybody in the class has been assigned three classmates randomly to give feedback to. These are listed in a message posted in the Teams channel.
• Presenters will all upload videos on or before 11:59pm on Thursday June 3rd.
• At some point before the end of the day on Saturday June 5th, everybody should watch the videos by people they are assigned to give feedback that aims to help them revise their work for their final projects.
• I will also watch all the videos and look over the uploaded presentation material and give presenters detailed feedback.

Plan: Presenting

Everybody should do two things before 11:59pm on Thursday June 3rd. You are welcome to do these at any point in advance:

1. Upload your presentation material in PDF, PNG, or JPG to "Final Presentation" dropbox in Canvas. I expect most people will be just be uploaded and exported slide deck from PowerPoint, Google Slides, etc.
2. Upload you video of your 10-15 minute long presentation in a message as an attachment in a new message in the Final Presentation Peer Feedback channel on Teams within their assigned group. You all can do this by clicking the "New Conversation" button and then clicking then clicking the paperclip/attachment icon.

Plan: Feedback

Everybody should do the following thing between 11:59pm on Thursday June 3rd and 11:59pm on Saturday June 5th:

1. Watch each short video for the 3 people you have been assigned to.
2. After watching each the video, spend a minimum of 10-15 minutes writing a reply to each presenter you are assigned to. You can leave this feedback by replying to conversation in Teams which will help keep things organized. Saying you liked the presentation is fine but focus on giving substantive, critical feedback that will help each person make concrete changes and improvements to the work in the presentation to produce a better report. Feel free to ask questions about things you were unclear about. Feel free to give concrete suggestions for course material that might be useful or connections that might be helpful. I expect everybody to spend between 10 and 15 minutes giving feedback to each presenters you are assigned to.

Each person will give feedback to 3 others. I expect that this assignment will take between 60-90 minutes (10-15m to watch each videos; 10-15mm for each piece of feedback). Feedback will be graded as part of the final presentations. I cannot give any credit for late assignments.

Presentation Format: Video Presentations

I are asking you all to prepare and share video version of your presentations as "pitches" for our project.

In terms of the video: I are not expecting anything fancy. I understand that folks are coming to this with different technical skills and working in a variety of living situations due to the pandemic. I am going to assess you entirely on the content of your presentation and pitch. I will not assess you on the production quality of your video. The pitches should be 10-12 minutes long and not more than 15 minutes in length.

I'm quite open into the nature of the video but here are some ideas:

• Giving a talk in an empty Zoom room with recording on works pretty well!
• If you have been building your presentation in PowerPoint, Keynote, or similar, you can create a "screencast" that records audio of yourself talking while recording video of whatever is on your screen. There are a bunch of tools to do this.
  • Here's information on how to use a built-in screen recorder in Windows 10
  • Here's information on how to do screen recording on Mac OSX
  • Here's a video about how to record yourself using Microsoft PowerPoint on Windows
  • Some people like the following software: Camtasia (proprietary but has a free trial); CamStudio (free/open source software but harder to use). I haven't used either.
• If it's easier, feel free to just use a cellphone or webcam video. For example, have a friend record you as you talk through an actual "poster" version of your presentation laid out on a table.

If you run into trouble, please ask on Teams for help. Keep in mind that I use Linux and are unlikely to be able to do much to trouble shoot specific problems. That said, your classmates will likely be of some help. If you figured something out, please give advice to others on Discord. If you've got experience doing this, please help your classmates.