| Author: | Stephen J. Turnbull |
|---|---|
| Organization: | Faculty of Engineering, Information, and Systems at the University of Tsukuba |
| Contact: | Stephen J. Turnbull <turnbull@sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> |
| Date: | April 20, 2020 |
| Copyright: | 2017, 2020 Stephen J. Turnbull |
| keywords: | presentation, schedule |
This document provides some information about the schedule of presentations in the Programs in Policy and Planning Sciences at the University of Tsukuba. It is based on the Master's Program, which is the most formalized, but applies in greater or lesser degree to undergraduate and doctoral students.
Some Japanese remarks follow the English. These are very incomplete and are not necessarily an accurate translation of the English.
The basic schedule for Master's students is
Doctoral students are similar but timing is more flexible, and determined by negotiation with AG.
For undergraduate students, there are only two specific dates:
Because the presentation time limit is very strict, it's important to keep the self-introduction short. The following is a common form:
システム情報工学研究科社会工学学位プログラムの１年、学生番号 ○○、の○○です。これから「○○に関する研究」の研究計画を発 表いたします。
My name is ○○, and my student number is ○○. I am a first year student in the Master Degree Program in Policy and Planning Science of the Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering. I will now present my research proposal about "○○".
When applicable, it is a good strategy to include remarks about how the research topic was inspired by your personal characteristics, such as geographical origin. However, you should not make this part of the opening self-introduction. You will only need to repeat it when discussing your research motivation anyway. Introduce it in a logical fashion when you discuss your research motivation.
Every presentation should include a list of references at the end. These must be limited to those that you intend to make specific reference to in your thesis, and must include any works that are cited in your presentation. Where possible introductory material should cite published work for motivating stories and theory, and statistical background information. Then you should provide two or three references that are specifically relevant to your work. For example,
These references should be "state of the art". Your research should balance comparability with originality, and both aspects should be discussed by reference to these state of the art works.
Finally, you should not use more than about 2 newspaper articles or references to non-technical pages of businesses (unless you are researching news organizations or business public relations behavior). Textbooks are also usually omitted, unless you refer to them for specific algorithms used in your research that are new to the field. Mostly your references should be drawn from academic journals or monographs in your research area.
Building a Reference Database has information about building your reference list.
You should record every presentation. Audio recording of your voice is embarrassing to many people, and video to most. You can get over that, and such recordings are both incentive and means to learn more effective presentation skills. I can lend devices for audio and video recording.
You must record Q and A sessions. If you don't have an electronic device (but you'll always have a phone, no?), make sure you write down questions and comments, at least. All of them. Some that you think are really simple at the time can be deeper than your first impression, and trivial improvements like fixing typos and minor math mistakes are easily forgotten when you relax (and you may not even be able to find them! record place as well). Recording is much easier! It may be useful to repeat the main content of the question, especially if the questioner's voice is indistinct, or the question or comment is long.
For the "karitoji" and evaluation (final) draft submissions, you are required to submit a Response to Comments on previous drafts and presentations, along with the most recent draft.
This "response" does not, in fact, answer questions and respond to comments. Comments on early drafts are primarily intended to help you improve your research or presentation. You must not be defensive about them, but rather welcome them. Thus, the Response is a table of contents giving the comment or questions itself, a brief description of how you changed your document, and the location of the change in the document.
The literal translation of the Japanese is Research Plan Presentation (研究計画発表), but I prefer the more tentative translation. I think it is better to focus on the novel, uncertain aspects of the project than on the plan, and that does correspond to the actual content of most proposal presentations.
The content of the presentation is similar to most presentations:
Introduction, background, and general motivation
"General" motivation is a statement about the scientific or policy interest.
Literature survey
Basic model and technical motivation
"Technical" motivation, on the other hand, explains why previous research fails to address the general motivation, and how your research provides improved models or improved methods, or both.
Research procedure
At this stage this includes proposed data sources, data collection methods, and analysis.
Expected results
Technical specification of hypotheses, and whether you expect them to be confirmed or rejected.
The term "accept" should be avoided with respect to hypotheses, because it has a connotation of finality. Your research alone can confirm a hypothesis, but for it to become accepted requires that other researchers replicate your results and show them to be robust to variations in the environment.
Schedule
Most student presentations spend only one slide on "schedule," which is hardly a plan. Instead, motivation and literature review get the most attention, followed by hypotheses. A better pattern puts much more emphasis on hypotheses and methodology, and somewhat more on schedule, so that these three components are given about equal time.
The midterm presentation is a sort of "qualifying examination." The examiners are looking for demonstration of enough work that they can be confident that a satisfactory thesis, based on a completed research project, can be produced.
The midterm presentation is expected to be a fairly complete implementation of something similar to the proposal. Research being inherently uncertain, implementing a research proposal as exactly as you might build a home is usually impossible. On the other hand, MPPS does not require that the proposal be updated, so the final report becomes the description of the project as implemented.
Data collection should be well underway, and preliminary analysis should make it clear that hypothesis tests have reasonable power.
The first draft submission is intended to allow the examiners to make a comprehensive assessment of the research product, allowing time to make fairly major corrections both in content and presentation. The following points are assessed:
The "karitoji" is supposed to be a completed research report. In theory, changes incorporated to the final submission, which is to be published by the university, should be limited to
As usual, practice rarely matches theory. But the closer you can come to limiting your changes to typos, clarification, and improving citation, the higher your evaluation will be. In non-academic work, you are likely to be able to "ship it" without these fixes.
自己紹介とは，発表時間が厳しいので短い方がいい。先輩はよく
システム情報工学研究科社会工学学位プログラムの１年、学生番号 ○○、の○○です。これから「○○に関する研究」の研究計画を発 表いたします。
のような形を使ったと覚えています。なお、研 究の動機が出身の町か地域に係わるものなら、是非 ＊動機説明＊ のさいに述べてはいいことです！ただし、頭の自己紹介には相応 しくないのです。動機の所に繰り返す必要が生じるので。（今回は、動機などの詳細は ＊含まれない＊ 紹介です。）
先行研究説明は下記のように用意してください。
bibliography.xlsx を利用してください。
http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/Teach/Zemi/bibliography.xlsx
でダウンロードできます。
すでに５件の先行研究を捜 し出したはずだが、今回さらに５件を加わる課題ですので計１０件以上を期待します。
３つの「一般タッグ」（理論、実証、政策）に加われて新しい自分の研究の内 容に係わるタッグを３以上付けて。できるだけ多くてさまざまにした方がいい。
タッグの有無を各件に記入（有＝１、無＝０）。
全部の欄に正確に適切なデータを記入せよ。ただし、
記入したシートをメールで私に送ってください。
なお、「説明」というのは主にタッグの選択と付け方、そして欠いたデータの 釈明という意味です。そして、「１０件」と量がこの段階で「おおい！多い！」と思っているが、 現段階で研究論文の質にかんする判断 能力はまだ身についていないはずなのでなんとか自分の研究テーマに関 係するものを基準にして選べばいい。なお、研 究背景や目的を表すものなら新聞や会社ホームペー ジから拾ったものを２つくらい認めますが、ほとんどが学術雑誌や研 究モノグラフにせよ。