Networked Rhetoric: Winter 2012

The Research Presentation
Assignment: Overview
For this assignment, you'll translate your written paper into an 8-9 minute oral presentation with your choice of multimedia support (such as PPT, Prezi, or Keynote slides, images, websites, film clips). You will deliver your presentation as part of a panel of students; there will be a 5 minute question and answer session following each panel.
Due:
·  4 Slides due: Thursday, February 23
·  Full draft (script & slides) due: Tuesday, February 28, by the start of class
·  Revision of presentation materials & OCT goals sheet due: Monday, March 5th, but 11:59pm
·  Presentation delivery: Tuesday, March 6; Thursday, March 8; Tuesday, March 14 – by individual assignment
·  Presentation reflection: due within 24 hours after the delivery of your presentation
Presentation format: 8-9 minute presentation of research-based argument, utilizing some form of multimedia.
Submission Format: Electronic posting to your Student portfolio on the Ning under a discussion entitled “Research Presentation” of all materials for both the draft and the revision. These include your notes, your revised script, your slides, your reflective memo and any images or links you plan to use during your presentation.
Grading: This assignment is worth 35% of the overall class grade.
Required Envision Reading: Chapter 9 (linked through Coursework)

Assignment Goals:

This assignment has several interrelated goals:

  1. To have you clearly convey your research argument to your audience through use of strong oral rhetoric augmented by multimedia support.
  2. To build on presentation skills developed during the quarter to strengthen the performance and structure of the oral/multimedia argument.
  3. To ask you to put into practice many of the rhetorical lessons of the course: to make strategic use of rhetorical appeals; to design an argument appropriate to their context and rhetorical situation; to utilize the five canons of rhetoric (invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery) effectively.
  4. To encourage you to consider how changing rhetorical situations and modes of delivery influence strategies of persuasion.
  5. To provide you with the opportunity to learn techniques for using technology and multimedia effectively in presenting complex ideas to a live audience.

The Process for completing this assignment

There are several steps involved in completing this assignment:

1.  Begin to draft your presentation (considering the design, style, tone, and introductory hook) and upload 4 slides to your student portfolio (a thread called “Research Presentation) by Thursday, February 23.

2.  Fully draft your presentation and upload those materials (images, links, slides, script, etc.) to your student portfolio by Tuesday, February 28.

3.  Meet with an OCT for an individual conference as you prepare and/or revise your presentation. Sign up at sututor.stanford.edu. Remember: you can meet with an OCT more than one time if you like. Sign up for a 30 minute or 60 minute time slot; be sure to note that you need to be videotaped during your tutoring session (this is mandatory). In preparation for your appointment, fill out the OCT Goals form (linked under the Research Presentation section on the Assignments Overview on the Ning) and bring it with you to that session. This OCT meeting is MANDATORY for this assignment. (See below for more information on the OCT involvement in this assignment)

4.  Revise your presentation and practice.

5.  Attend your panel dress rehearsal; give and receive feedback on your presentation (dress rehearsals are a mandatory component of this assignment).

6.  Upload your revised presentation materials (script, links, clips, multimedia) to your student portfolio by class on Tuesday, March 6.

7.  Deliver your revised, research presentation by individual assignment on Tuesday March 6; Thursday, March 8; or Tuesday, March 13. Presentation schedule will be announced by 7pm on the evening of February 29th.

8.  Submit your presentation reflection within 24 hours after delivering your presentation. This should be appended to the “Research Presentation” thread on your Student Portfolio that contains your revised presentation materials.

The OCTs & Your Presentation

As part of the Research Presentation assignment, you are required to meet with an OCT outside of class-time to practice your presentation. Visit http://sututor.stanford.edu to make an OCT appointment. It is recommended that you sign up for an hour-long appointment; it is required that you have the OCT record your presentation and that you review that recording with the OCT during your conference. It is also required that you fill out the OCT Goals form (linked under the Research Presentation section on the Assignments Overview on the Ning), bring it with you to the session, and then turn it in to me afterward. If you fill it out electronically, you can upload it to your Student Portfolio.

Writing the Presentation Reflection

The presentation reflection is your opportunity to reflect on your process and rhetorical strategies in approaching this assignment as well as your assessment of your own performance and delivery of material – in this way, parts of it might be written before you deliver your presentation, while your final reflection on your performance should be written afterward. It can be informal in voice, but nevertheless should be clear, detailed, well-organized, and approximately 300 words long. It is due within 24 hours after you have delivered your presentation.

Here's what should be included in your reflection (not necessarily in this order):

·  A reflection on the process of developing your academic presentation: In completing this reflection, you should take into account the process of moving from written discourse (research paper draft) to oral discourse; the revisions you had to make to argument, language and content to accommodate this shift; the results of peer review and OCT meetings (you must include a brief report on your OCT meeting); and the process of revision.

·  Reference to your trials and triumphs in creating this presentation, including tech inspirations or obstacles, questions of voice or delivery, moments of epiphany, reflections on practice sessions, etc.

·  Discussion of how rhetoric factored into your work on this assignment (this part may very well be integrated with the earlier ones). Describe how your understanding of rhetorical appeals (pathos, logos, ethos), kairos, the five canons of rhetoric, and/or the rhetorical situation factored into your drafting and revising of the presentation.

·  Assessment and reflection of your performance during the actual presentation itself. Did everything go as planned? What were you particularly proud of or thought went quite well? What would you revise further given the chance? How do you feel the audience responded to your argument? What is your personal overall assessment of your content and delivery of your research project in this oral/multimedia form?

Some of these sections may be more developed than others, depending on your project. Your goal here is to reflect on this presentation as a piece of research, writing, and rhetoric; however don't forget to use specific and concrete language and example in writing your memo.

As with other reflective memos, you may submit this as a 3 minute audio and/or video file if you prefer. If you choose this option, your reflection should still have a strong structure (plan what you are going to say; don’t just start recording and talk off the top of your head) and should cover all the points mentioned above. The tone may be informal – as if you were talking to me in my office. You can either upload this to coursework, post it to the Ning if you want (and if it fits in terms of file size), upload it to a private YouTube site, or you could burn it on a disk and leave it at my office (Sweet 320). If you choose this audio/video option for your reflection, you MUST send me an email to let me know this and also to tell me how you will deliver it.

Evaluation Criteria

Presentations will be graded based on the evaluation criteria that we, as a class, constructed and posted on the Ning. In general, though, here are some fundamental qualities of an exemplary presentation:

·  Oral argument (clear & persuasive topic, thesis, and argument; appropriate & ethical use of source material to support argument; attention to time limitations; clear structure; strong intro & conclusion)

·  Style (consistent, appropriate use of high, medium or low style; effective use of rhetorical strategies [narration, example, cause-effective, process, definition, division/classification] to structure argument; attention to oral style [for instance, parallelism, repetition, climactic order, signposting - as appropriate]; effective implementation of rhetorical appeals; appropriate tone)

·  Rhetorical situation (effective assessment of audience-text-author dynamic for presentation; effective assessment of kairos)

·  Sources (integration of primary and secondary as appropriate; this is a research presentation, and your research should be evident – do not bury it; figure out ways to include references to your sources to increase your ethos and to showcase the research that you have done; do not make broad claims – locate them in your research where appropriate, as you would in a written argument)

·  Multimedia (appropriate choice of multimedia [i.e. props, plasma screens, laptops, poster, whiteboard, PowerPoint, Explorer, etc.]); appropriate relation to oral argument; effective design and implementation; "grace under fire" i.e. dealing with tech glitches smoothly

·  Delivery (pacing, vocal intonation & projection, use of voice for emphasis)

·  Embodied rhetoric (purposeful gesture and demeanor, appropriate dress, use of space)

·  Memory (comfortable with material, derived from practice; discrete use of an mnemetic aids; ability to improvise or adjust speech as needed; clear visual/verbal signposting and/or use of key terms as needed for the audience)

Please also note:

·  Reflection - there will be a 1/2 grade deduction for failure to post your presentation reflection with 24 hours after delivering your presentation (i.e. from a B+ to a B/B+). After 48 hours, your reflection will not be accepted, and you will receive a full grade deduction (from a B+ to a B).

·  Material from previous presentations – Do not re-use script or slides from previous presentations. You may summarize material/definitions/controversies that you’ve presented before, however, if you need to provide background for your argument. You may, occasionally, re-introduce an image or graph etc. that you’ve used before ONLY if it is absolutely fundamental to your argument and if you make reference to the fact that students have seen it before and why it is so important to see it again.

·  Time requirements - Presentations should be 8-9 minutes in length; since adhering to time limits speaks to the canon of arrangement (structuring a presentation to fit into a certain time frame) and memory (practicing the presentation to make sure you are on time), you will a 1/2 grade deduction for presentations that do not meet these requirements. There is a 30 second grace period on either side (7min30sec-9min30sec); also people whose presentations go over time due to tech difficulties are granted reasonable exemption for these penalties.

·  Missing dress rehearsal - - there will be a 1/2 grade deduction for skipping your dress rehearsal (without e-mailing with a legitimate reason ahead of time)

·  Missing presentation - there will be a 1/2 grade deduction for skipping presentation date (without e-mailing with a legitimate reason ahead of time)

This presentation is worth 35% of your overall grade for the class.

Further Resources

There are many resources available to you:

·  Envision chapter 9

·  The Oral Communication Program: While you are required to have an OCT appointment for this presentation, you can certainly sign up for more than one appointment. Make use of this fabulous resource! Sign up at http://sututor.stanford.edu

·  The Writing Center: Although the OCTs are the most trained in oral presentation skills, many of the tutors in the writing center teach PWR 2 and so could give you feedback on your presentation as well. Make an appointment online at http://hwc.stanford.edu for a meeting with one of the following tutors (these are the ones who teach PWR 2; please note that tutors whose name is followed by “DMC” are Digital Media Consultants and have additional expertise in working with slides and multimedia presentations):

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Networked Rhetoric: Spring 2010

o  Helle Rytkonen (DMC)

o  Shay Brawn

o  Kim Savelson

o  Kevin DiPirro

o  Julia Bleakney

o  Susan Wyle

o  Gabrielle Moyer

o  Carolyn Ross (DMC)

o  Arturo Heredia

o  John Peterson

o  Patti Hanlon-Baker

o  John Lee

o  Kimberly Moekle

o  Donna Hunter

o  Sohui Lee (DMC)

o  Alyssa O’Brien (DMC)

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Networked Rhetoric: Spring 2010

If you decide to go to the Writing Center for a meeting about your presentation, be sure to bring your presentation notes and/or script and ideas of multimedia with you.

·  Contact me by e-mail (alfano@) or tweet me (@christinapwr2) if you have any questions.

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Networked Rhetoric: Spring 2010

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