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Oral Presentation Guidelines

As we’ve noted before, many of you will do research projects during your careers that resemble the lengthy project you're working on in this course. In a professional setting, various workers or groups within an organization typically ask for or expect a preliminary presentation of a research writer’s topic and results. While such a prliminary (and often informal)  "oral report" does not yet call for polished, conclusive, earth-shaking results, it does call for careful planning and preparation—you should still convey the results of your research thus far in both an intellectually substantive and an engaging way.

Your central challenge as a presenter in such cases is to explain a set of data and ideas that you know well, but that your audience may know next to nothing about. What’s more, the members of your audience may have their own preconceived notions that contradict your ideas. Therefore, take nothing for granted—what seems obvious to you may not be so to your audience.

Remember that you must do more than simply make assertions; in order to persuade your audience, you must present evidence. Consider including examples from all of the kinds of information that you have been gathering: observations, interviews, close examinations of written documents, and concepts and/or insights from articles that you have found through your own bibliographic research. You can describe what you have observed; quote from your writer, his or her collaborators, or his or her writing audiences; show us actual examples of the sorts of writing that they routinely produce; and/or summarize relevant ideas from other writers. Also, consider using visual aids, handouts, and other presentation materials. These are not required, as long as your explanations are clear; however, handouts may be the easiest way to illustrate some of your points, particularly if you plan to discuss examples of your subject’s writing.  Photocopied samples of your writer's writing might be a good handout, IF you plan to discuss them with us somehow.

On some of the presentation days you will have access to online facilities, should you want to show us something on the Internet, or otherwise use a computer. Let me know if you'd like to use any other audio-visual equipment.

Don’t worry much at this point about presenting final conclusions, or about tying together all the pieces of your research under one central theme. What’s most important here is that you be descriptive in a systematic way, while also offering some sense of how you see the parts of your research and your ideas fitting together in analytical terms so far.  Remember that you only have 10-15 minutes to talk and to address any questions; as usual, concision and clarity are key.

General Report Format

In effect, your presentation is a progress report for you to share with fellow researchers, as well as a chance to receive input and suggestions from others (as in many professional work settings, a primary purpose of such presentations is to assist each other in moving your projects toward completion). As a result, it’s important that these presentations share certain features. Each presentation should address the following areas, but you should avoid an overly schematic presentation that merely answers the questions in each of these areas in a plodding, step-by-step manner. You are welcome--in fact, encouraged--to be somewhat creative and original in how you structure and deliver your material.

• Introduction: Although your colleagues may or may not be familiar with your project, they need to understand the basics--who are you studying? what's this person's job, background, status, and so on? why did you choose this person? (any other relevant details will help here) Remember that this is probably the first time that most members of your audience will have heard about your project and your ideas, so it’s important that you catch their attention and convey what you consider to be compelling about your project. Here, too, you can address your own biases and interests: Again, why did you choose your project? What were you hoping to find out? What facts about you might influence how you perceive and/or approach your subject matter, and how might they do so?

• Your subject as writer: Once you have introduced your project, your audience will be expecting to hear about your research subject as a writer. Again, don’t assume that your audience already knows what sort of writing a person in any particular profession might do, or how they go about producing this writing. Explain what you believe to be the most important methods and characteristics of this person as a writer. This could include explanation of how this person typically proceeds from blank page to finished draft, including the most important collaborators on writing projects (if there are any), and the audience or audiences for this writing. Here too, you must describe the “big picture,” that is, all of the myriad sorts of writing your subject accomplishes regularly, even if in the end you are most interested in concentrating on only a few texts.

• Ideas and analysis: Our class readings and discussions have been our intellectual common ground in thinking about these research projects. You can and should address any other ideas or ways of focusing on your writer and his or her writing that have arisen for you, but it will be particularly helpful if you can at least touch on two of the writers/issues that we have discussed in class; your class notes and the online chart we came up with for each of our three articles should help you in these areas—the charts are linked to the handouts section of our class web site. Generally, these areas of common ground include:

Technology usage and collaborative work methods: John Seely Brown

Socio-economic class and communication styles: bell hooks

Race, gender, and other forms of privilege: Peggy McIntosh

Literary versus professional writing styles: Tom McKeown

Share with your audience some of your analytical thoughts and conclusions (these will of course be tentative at this point). Among these four areas of interest, or others, which area or combination of areas seems to you to have the more significant impact on your subject as a writer? In what way? Why? What seems to you to have the least significant impact? In what way? Why?

• Audience input: Finally, keep in mind that preliminary research presentations of this sort are more like conversations than lectures.  Part of that process consists of getting feedback from your colleagues, and asking for such feedback. Try to end your presentation with a request for input from the audience on something specific in your research. Be prepared and even hopeful for good ideas from your co-workers. For example, you may not feel that socio-economic class is particularly relevant in your subject’s writing, yet, after your oral presentation, a colleague might ask helpful, revealing, or stimulating questions related to hooks’ ideas. Similarly, you may feel that your writer uses a strictly business style, but an audience member might point out what seem to be literary elements in the texts you provide. Be open to such new possibilities or potential insights; these exchanges may well enrich your understanding, or even change your mind. And when others do their presentations, don't hesitate to ask questions and offer suggestions of your own.