Student's Guide To Seminar

STUDENT'S GUIDE TO SEMINAR

This guide was put together by the department of CSE in response to requests from students for guidance in the choice, preparation, and presentation of seminars. Although we have tried to include all the major aspects of seminar choice, preparation and presentation.

1.    Just what is meant by a seminar?

As the term is used in this department, a seminar is a talk on a relatively specialized technical subject delivered to an audience whose general technical background is similar to that of the speaker.

2.    Why do students have to give seminars?

The seminar is an important part of your graduate training as professionals. It gives you practice in the oral and visual communication of technical information. Throughout your career - whether in an academic or industrial atmosphere - you will find the seminar a commonly used means for the transmission of information to both small and large groups of your colleagues. Someday you may have to present a seminar as part of a job interview. This is virtually mandatory when you are applying for an academic position at an institution with a graduate program; it is occasionally requested by industrial organizations as well. How you are judged in this role will play a large part in determining your overall evaluation for the position. You don't need to put on an Award winning performance, but you must be good enough to convey the impression that you are a competent and responsible professional. Not to forget of course, to get best marks out of 50!!!!!.

3.    How to choose a topic for a seminar?

One of the first habits you should develop during graduation is to read - or at least look over!! - some of the technical literature, i.e., journals or technical papers in the ACM communication, IEEE Explorer and Springer. At first you may find many of the articles difficult but as you gain knowledge from research, courses and self-study, you'll find more and more of them becoming comprehensible. Ultimately, you may find a general topic that sparks your interest and which you feel you'd like to pursue further.

You may get seminar topic ideas from courses: some topic introduced in previous semesters may spark your interest and encourage you to begin research on it.

4.    Why are all students required to attend seminars every semester?  The three main reasons are:

a.       To observe other seminar speakers and to learn from their examples (both good and bad). 

b.      To provide an audience for other seminar speakers - a seminar is a shared learning experience between speaker and audience. 

c.       To increase everyone's (student's and faculty's) breadth of experience in chosen areas or related technologies.

5.    How long should a seminar last?

The graduate seminar should last approximately 20 minutes. This includes 5 minutes for answering questions. You should avoid running the talk beyond the time as some people will be waiting their turn, faculties do have other classes and engagements! Also, most people have a limit to their attention span, even the most interesting topic in the world begins to appear less and less exciting the longer the speaker continues into a second hour! On the other hand, an overly short seminar will give the impression of underpreparedness.

6.    What are considered the most important attributes of a good seminar? Probably the most obvious and quantifiable ones are the following: 

a.       Being able to express yourself clearly and confidently so that your very bearing commands respect and enables you to get and hold the attention of your audience. 

b.      Giving the audience the feeling that you are talking directly to them rather than being a sideshow by talking to the blackboard or to a sheet of notes. Face your audience as much as possible. 

c.       Freedom from disconcerting and annoying mannerisms: Adding "OK" to the end of every sentence, speaking too rapidly, speaking too softly so others must constantly strain to hear, saying "ah" and "well" before each sentence. 

d.      Quality of visual aids - don't use slides with small print, sloppy lettering, or masses of data. 

e.       Know your audience. A good speaker knows how to gauge his/her talk at an appropriate level of sophistication: advanced enough to be interesting but still understood by a majority of listeners, but not at such a low level that the treatment is shallow and trivial. 

f.       The ability to answer reasonable questions and to admit it gracefully when you can't. No one expects you to know everything and you will fool very few people by attempting to bluff. 

g.      Be enthusiastic!

7.    How expert the student expected to be in the topic of seminar?

Although it is unrealistic to expect a graduate student to know every possible detail about the work he or she is discussing and to have an expert's background in all the supporting theories, you are expected to know considerably more about the topic than you have actually revealed during the talk. An often quoted rule is that the speaker should understand the subject at least one level of sophistication higher than the level of presentation. And if a question should stump you, don't panic and don't try to bluff. Even faculty members get asked questions they can't answer. Nevertheless, you should be able to answer most of the questions asked; particularly the more obvious ones and you should be able to reinforce any of the assumptions and logical foundations of the topics you discuss. It's embarrassing both to you and to the questioner if you can't give a satisfactory explanation for an obvious logical flaw or gap in the reasoning.

8.    Are there any general rules for how a seminar should be organized?

This depends on the topic and the audience, but generally following is representative: Begin with a clear statement of just what your topic is and what you intend to do with it. Sometimes some historical background is helpful here. In any event, make certain everyone is with you at the starting point. Be sure to define any unusual terms don't assume that everyone knows immediately what SSAD or CMMI stand for. If you're afraid of being too elementary, you can define such terms unobtrusively (e.g., "My talk today deals with Structured System Analysis and Design, usually called SSAD"). If you're going to use a lot of unfamiliar abbreviations, have these written on the blackboard ahead of time and leave them there for reference or a small hand out can be distributed well before. It's also a good idea to outline to the audience just how the talk will be organized and just what in general you intend to cover. This can be done with slides at the start of the talk. Be sure to point out why the topic is important, e.g., does it fill a unique need, or supplement an already existing technique, make possible new advances, or blaze a new frontier? From there on the actual topic itself should suggest a logical mode of development. Avoid abrupt transitions from one part to another; each part, although distinct, should lead logically to the next. In ending, give a short summary or recap of the entire talk; this reinforces the salient points in the minds of your audience and gives them the feeling they have learned a lot from you.

10. How many slides or transparencies should there be in a seminar?

To do justice to the material on a single slide, you should allow 1 minute on the average. Thus a 20 minutes seminar (allowing 5 minutes for questions) would have no more than 20 slides  perhaps 25 at most if some are suitable for passing over quickly.

 Dept. of CSE, AGMRCET, VARUR.