Paper presentations

As discussed in the Class Format section, on Discussion days we will have students give presentations on a choice of the papers listed in the spreadsheet for that day. To sign up for a particular day, add your name and the paper you would like to present to the course schedule. Certain papers have been pre-selected because it is important that we cover them in class.

Each paper presentation will be 5 minutes, followed by 1 minute of clarifying questions specific to that paper. After all the presentations finish, we will discuss each of the papers as a class, the themes that connect them, and interesting and impactful research directions that relate to them.

All paper presentations will be from a shared slide deck. Add your presentation slides to the shared deck by 11:59 PM two days before the class you signed up to present. The shared deck will be identified in the course spreadsheet.

Guidelines for making effective paper presentations:

Discussion presentations are extremely short (only 5 minutes), and you will be cut off abruptly when you reach your time to make sure everyone has time to present. So make it short and sweet! You will not be able to include every detail from the paper in 5 minutes. I strongly advise making 5 slides or fewer. Less is more. Just focus on covering the highlights:

  • What was the key idea? Brief description of the technical idea or contribution.
  • How was this different or novel from what had been done before? Or why is it an interesting contribution?
  • How well did it work? (What were the results?)
  • What has been the impact? Do people still use this? Did it steer the field in a new direction?
  • (Optional): What did you personally find surprising, cool, or maybe less convincing or unimpressive.

Note that the way the class is structured, most people will not have read the paper you’re presenting. So you’re just giving them the information they need to be aware of the paper’s key idea and how it fits in the general landscape. If they find it interesting, they can go read the paper themselves to learn the details.

You can think of this short presentation as closer to how you would give a quick elevator pitch for your own paper at a conference in limited time, or how you would quickly explain some paper to your colleague over lunch. Being able to concisely and clearly explain a piece of work is a great skill that I hope you’ll be able to hone through this course.