What is the oral presentation?
This is your presentation to the class in the field of the material pertinent to your topic. You will presumably want to take advantage of the images you provided in the field guide. You should plan on speaking for maybe 10-15 minutes, depending a lot on the presentation topic. You should also be ready to answer any questions that come up.
What is the purpose of the presentation?
This is where you explain the significance of your topic to the class, providing insight on the observations of significance, the interpretations of those observations and the resulting conflicts (if any) between interpretations. In the presentation you most explicitly make these connections, walking us through the logic in a clear and parsiminous manner. Identifying key observations that distinguish between conflicting interpretations is quite helpful.
What should be in the presentation?
Some introduction to the topic (including a brief--sentence or two--punchline on why the topic is significant), an overview of the observables (ideally including mention of things we can actually see from our spot in the field), theories that account for the observations, and some kind of summary of what our state of understanding is. On some topics, things are pretty well closed and the story might be quite clean. On other topics, the story might differ between groups and your focus might be on why there are differing interpretations. You should make intellegent use of your visual aids that you provided for inclusion in the field guide.
Structure: the old adage is "tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you've told them." It is helpful to an audience to know where you are going so they have a clue what might be important and what might be oral window dressing. This helps your audience to retain focus. Of course, you need then to have the bulk of your talk address the thing(s) you indicated were important in your introduction. In general, after the introduction you want to first lay out the observations of the object of interest; these can be topically arranged or in order in which the observations were made. Just keep in mind that the listeners are looking for clues on what matters. After sharing what is actually seen, then discuss how these observations are woven together for some integrated tectonic interpretation.
What makes a good presentation?
Organization and synthesis. Good organization is a huge help in following a presentation. Tossing things in willy nilly leaves a listener wondering what is important and how these different pieces might fit together. It will also help you as a presenter avoid forgetting key elements of your presentation. The more you understand how different workers' work fits together, the more you are apt to move away from a simple "First A did this and then B did that" kind of presentation. Tectonics is a synthesis of different information at the broad scale, and many of the topics can represent integratation of multiple disciplines. The more you are able to make these different elements be part of a more seamless whole, the more successful your presentation will be. Of course, the degree to which you have digested the available literature matters too: doing a brilliant recap of one paper while ignoring a dozen others that are as relevant is not the best approach, but neither is a fumbling tour of bullet points from a dozen papers. For more difficult topics (those with a rich and varied literature, generally marked as 5717 topics), you will probably have to choose a balance between completeness and synthesis. A final element is understanding: you should be able to explain terms and concepts that you present to the class. Being able to spout the goobledegook you find in a paper is worthless if you cannot explain what it is and why it matters.
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Please send mail to cjones@colorado.edu if you encounter any problems or have suggestions.
C. H. Jones | CIRES | Dept. of Geological Sciences | Univ. of Colorado at Boulder
Last modified at January 10, 2020 3:45 PM