Software Security

CompSci 725 FC 02
Clark Thomborson
Handout 18: Samples of my Feedback on Oral Presentations

Excerpt (3 points):

• You rewrote several of the authors’ sentences, introducing grammatical errors not present in the original.
• You omitted several important sentences within crucially important paragraphs, making it difficult to follow the authors’ argument.
• You omitted important definitions and discussions of important concepts.
• You omitted paragraphs, which are necessary for the reader to understand the authors’ meaning.
• You omitted the names of the authors.
• 0/0 (not required, your article was quite short already. So I’ll multiply your other marks by 15/12.)
• Good, however you should have retained the detailed example in section XX.
• You removed the paragraph formatting in places, making it slightly harder to read.
• Cutting out section XX entirely was an appropriate decision.
• Your excerpt showed no “focus”; instead you tried to shorten the paper to ten pages without limiting its coverage. A better approach would have been to omit sections XX and YY entirely, so that you could focus your classmates’ attention on the most important parts of your paper.
• You omitted an interesting and relevant comparison with the most commonly employed technology of this type.
• Your reformatting into MSWord was carefully done, especially in the mathematical typography; subscripts and font sizes are often garbled in a cut-and-paste, but yours were accurate and consistently sized.

Slides (7 points):

• You introduce a change to the authors’ example on your slide XX, for no apparent reason.
• You did an excellent job of correcting a mistake made by the author.
• You misspelled some technical words, possibly causing confusion.
• Good effort, especially in redrawing the figures for clarity in the slideshow.
• The slideshow was generally unsuccessful in carrying the meaning of any important point in your article, because you omitted the definitions of key concepts.
• Your slides had no “focus” — you covered the entire article. You should have shown your critical and appreciative understanding by emphasizing the most important point or points.
• You had too many slides, with insufficient “focus” on the most important elements. Your oral presentation was rushed as a result.
• You spoke at great length on several topics, which were only mentioned by name on your slide. (Your slides should contain the most important information, so that your audience can read it, as well as hear it. If a topic is important enough to talk about for a long time, you should revise your slide to contain more information about it.)
• A concept you presented on slide XX was not present in your excerpt. (If it is important enough to emphasize in your slideshow, then it certainly should have been in your excerpt; and once you cut it from your excerpt, you should not have included it in your presentation.)
• Good length & amount of detail.
• Your slideshow was successful at explaining some difficult and important concepts.
• Your analysis on slides XX was an excellent linkage to material presented earlier in Compsci 725.
• You introduced some excellent diagrams, not present in the original text.

Timing (2 points):

• 2/2 You finished your slideshow in 7 to 15 minutes.
• 1.5/2 You took more than 15 minutes.
• 0.5/2 You had not reached the last slide after 18 minutes.

Q&A (3 points):

• You gave an incorrect answer to my question.
• You had not prepared a question in your slideshow.
• Your answer to my question did not show any depth of understanding of material in your slideshow.
• Your prepared questions were not thought provoking; instead they could be answered by “pattern-matching” on words and phrases in your slideshow.
• In the Q&A period, you did not reveal any depth of knowledge or thought about the material you presented.
• You wrote excellent questions into your slideshow.
• Your responses during the discussion period showed no evidence that you had thought carefully about what was written in this article.
• Your question was very difficult: are you able to answer it? (If not, then there’s little chance that anyone in the audience will be able to do so.)
• You handled the discussion very well, showing excellent understanding of the material you presented.
• You posed a stimulating question. You defended your critical appreciation ably in the Q&A session.

Totals (15 points maximum):

• Individual scores: 7, 8.75, 9.5, 10.5, 11, 12, 12.5, 12.5, 14.5
• Average: 10.9