NTU SCE Final Year Project - Oral

Student: Donald Duck
Supervisor: Dr. Nachiket Kapre
Date: 15th March 2014

Advice

• Use the bare-bones/vanilla PowerPoint template
  • Students spend too much time changing fonts, font colors, setting up animations and poorly distributing presentation elements.
  • You should focus on the key message and not the avoidable, poorly-orchestrated theatrics.
• An FYP oral should be structured to be concise
  • A 15-minute oral should have roughly 15 slides
  • Spend a minute on each slide
• Slide text should NOT be complete sentences – but merely words and phrases
  • Coach yourself to use the bullets in the slides as seed for talking points
• Use quantitative evidence in the presentation
  • In an engineering-oriented presentation, technical arguments should be made with evidence
  • Always show numbers and measurements to make a point
  • Quantify, quantify, quantify
• Use simple examples
  • It is highly unlikely that the examiner has the time/attention span to deeply understand your core problem
  • Avoid conveying an incorrect message by constructing an overly simplistic example
    • The example should be selected to identify the challenges you have faced/solved
• Use PowerPoint objects directly when drawing plots or diagrams
  • Sloppy students will simply copy and paste plots from their reports – these will be lower resolution and inappropriate for a large screen
  • Do not just show data tables… Visualizations of data in tables are more easily comprehensible.
  • Lead your audience through the visuals
    • What question does this plot answer?
    • What is interesting about this plot?
    • Define the axes and explain which part of the plot represents good results and which part represents bad results.
• Practice once or twice
  • I’ve seen presentations go haywire for frivolous reasons
  • Practice at least once so you have feedback (from your own judgment or from a friend) and adjust accordingly
• Face the examiners (audience)
  • If you’re lost on your slide with your back to the examiners, we won’t hear you clearly
• Display confidence and poise
  • I don’t particularly care about how you dress – the FYP oral is not a judgment on your dressing skills
    • Caveat: It doesn’t hurt to be presentable (just don’t overdo it)
  • Impress us with your words and wit

Here is a recommended structure for organizing a good FYP presentation. Stick to the default PowerPoint template, font sizes, and layout – do not waste time trying to be cute.

Problem (1 slide)

• What problem are you solving? What is your claim?
  • Answer this directly upfront in a concise single sentence
  • Use additional/separate slides (if needed) to explain the claim
    • Remember, a claim can be proved or disproved so choose justly

Introduction (2-3 slides)

• Use an example to motivate the challenge in the FYP project.
  • Feel free to use/draw pictures when illustrating the properties of the problem challenge
  • Build intuition about what is going on.
  • Maybe OK to show a sneak preview of what the solved final result looks like
    • Just show a glimpse to keep us excited

Idea (3-4 slides)

• What are the key building blocks of your system or idea?
  • Any engineering system has moving parts that must work together in tandem to demonstrate a final solution
  • What are the inputs and outputs of such a system, and what properties must it enforce?
  • Are there constraints to be considered when searching for the solution to your problem?
• Reuse the example to show how you solve the identified problem
  • The beauty of simple examples is that they are easy to solve on a piece of paper
    • Hence, ideal for slide-based communication
  • Imagine you are explaining your FYP project to your classmate
    • Instinctively, you will resort to examples and be all animated and excited
    • Talk to me like you are talking to a friend. I want to feel the excitement you feel for your project.

Experiment Design (1-2 slides)

• What aspects of your system did you test? How did you set up the test?
• How did you make sure your results are trustworthy?
• What key engineering questions do these tests answer?
  • These may be best answered in consultation with your supervisor

Results (3-4 slides)

• Show pretty graphs and plots
  • A trick I use extensively is the incremental reveal of results in a 2D plot…
  • Show the axes-only first… Then show one curve… Then animate the second curve and so on…
  • This strategy keeps visual clutter to a minimum and as an audience I know what to focus on
    • Caution: This is the only place where the “Appear” animation in PowerPoint is OK. Animation in general is a poor way to communicate an idea. You’re talking to a mostly technical audience and you do not need to treat us like kids addicted to moving objects.

Conclusions (1 slide)

• Which claims from the start did your FYP project substantiate?
  • Without quantifiable outcomes, your project is not an engineering project.
• Were you surprised by any roadblock or did everything go smoothly?
• Review the technical skills you learned.

DO NOT HAVE AN IDIOTIC THANK YOU SLIDE

Updated: 15th March 2014