Paper and Oral Presentation Assignment

Tropical Biology

Paper and Oral Presentation Assignment

2013

This assignment includes:

1. A 10 minute oral presentation

2. A five to six-page paper (double-spaced) with a reference list (not included in the five page total).

3. Two take-home messages from your oral presentation. These should be on a separate sheet at the end of your paper.

The paper will focus on a current topic in tropical biology. The paper should have a specific theme or focus within the more general topic you have been assigned. One of the first slides should state this theme. Please check with me about your theme at some point well before the assignment is due.

Deadlines for the assignment vary, depending on your topic. The paper is due at the beginning of class on the day you make your presentation. The oral presentation is due 24 hours before your paper is due, as an electronic file sent to Dr. Lindell (see detailed instructions below).

Assignments that are not ready on time will automatically lose 25% of the points available for that assignment and must be turned in the next class. For example, together the paper and presentation are worth 150 points so a maximum of only 112.5 would be available if the assignment is turned in one class late. Assignments not completed by one class after the deadline will not be accepted and you will receive no points.

Each oral presentation and paper must include the following information:

An introduction explaining the topic and its significance from biological and other perspectives.

The body of the paper where you describe the current state of knowledge about this topic, citing current and relevant literature. Any hypotheses and their evidence should be stated. Some papers will not lend themselves to hypotheses but there may be different points of view about a topic. Please check with me if you are unsure of the material you should cover.

The body of the paper should also include an in-depth discussion of 1 or 2 focal studies from the literature that investigated a hypothesis or idea relevant to the topic. An in-depth discussion includes a statement of objectives and hypotheses, and a brief description of methods, results, and the authors’ interpretations. You should also describe one strength and one weakness of the study. This is your opportunity to provide some critical assessment of the paper.

A section on what would be useful for future researchers to investigate. How can we make progress on this topic? This tends to be the weakest section in papers—spend time and effort to make it a strong section.

One or two take-home messages—what should your audience remember?

Please bring one copy of your final paper on the due date.Final papers must be typewritten, have page numbers, a reference list, and be stapled together. Otherwise they will not be accepted.

Guidelines for oral presentations

Your oral presentation must be 10,000 KB or less—otherwise it’s difficult for me to open and store them. Presentations that are more than 10,000 KB will not be accepted.

Bring your presentation to class on a small USB drive that I can use as a backup in case I can’t open the presentation you sent me the day before.

If you use a Macintosh computer you need to save images on your computer before you insert them into Powerpoint. If you just copy them from a website, I won’t be able to open your presentation in class.

Oral presentations should be done with Powerpoint or some other electronic format for presentation. You must send me (by email) your presentation at least 24 hours before the class during which your presentation will be given. If I don’t receive your presentation by this time it will be considered late and subject to the penalties described above. You must also receive an email back from me confirming that I received your presentation. If you do not receive this confirmation within three hours of sending it (unless you send it at 3 am), you should assume I did not receive your electronic copy and you should contact me. You may not send me updated versions after the deadline. This is not fair to students who completed the final version on time.

Tips for giving an effective oral presentation

Practice the talk several times.

Memorize what you are going to say with notes to fall back on. Some people can get away with extemporaneous talks but most cannot.

Do not put lots of text on every slide and then read all the text. Your slides should provide an outline, not every detail—you will fill in the details.

Do not overload your slides with numerous different fonts/colors/background effects, etc. Aim for simple and elegant.

Speak slowly.

Speak toward people at the back of the room to ensure that you are speaking loudly enough.

Make eye contact with the audience.

Anticipate questions that might be asked so that you are prepared with answers.

To keep in mind while writing the paper:

In your introductory paragraph, provide the reader with a plan for where the paper is going.

Underline or italicize all scientific names. If you are referring to several species within a genus, for example, Didelphis spp., do not italicize spp. After you first mention a species in a paper with both its common and scientific names, you can then refer to it by one or the other. Also, you can abbreviate the genus name with just the first capital letter, e.g. Didelphis virginiana is D. virginiana.

Cite references correctly in the text and in the reference list. For a one-author paper it is cited (Roberts 1999) in the text; for two authors (Roberts and Friedmann 1999); for three authors or more (Roberts et al. 1999). You must cite references regularly throughout your paper—every two or three sentences when you are providing factual material. You will cite less often when you are interpreting or analyzing the information you found.

Do not include references in the final list that you have not cited in the paper. Formats for references are found at the bottom of this sheet.

The word "data" is plural. Hence you say, "These data suggest…" I know--sounds funny but that's the way it is.

Try not to start sentences with authors’ names. Instead of saying "Roberts and Friedmann (1999) found that pikas are limited by winter temperatures" say "Pikas are limited by winter temperatures (Roberts and Friedmann 1999)."

Avoid terms like wonderful, fascinating. They are too informal for this type of writing.

Do not use quotations. Paraphrase instead. Something like Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death" is a memorable quotation but descriptions of someone's research results should be paraphrased.

Please be sure you are using the correct terms when you use species, population, community, genus, family, taxonomic group, etc.

Read your paper out loud to yourself when you are doing the final editing. Make sure your sentences are well-written.

When you list studies that should be done in the future be as specific as possible. Don’t say "We need more information on how to manage this species". Say something like, "Future studies

should determine how agricultural runoff affects the temperature and salinity of the streams where these mussels reproduce and how their reproduction is affected."

References for this assignment

You will need at least six references for this assignment. At least five must be from the primary literature. The other reference can be from the secondary literature. You may only use one web-based reference and it will likely count as a reference from the secondary literature. Check with me if you are not sure.

Primary literature is original research papers that describe studies. These papers will be articles from scientific journals in which scientists report their findings. Secondary literature is information like that presented in your textbook where someone else has read the primary literature (we hope) and summarized it. Or, for example, an author may have written a book on the patterns of insect species diversity in different regions of the world and has summarized work by him/herself and other scientists. Encyclopedias are secondary references. The secondary literature is useful for getting a broad overview of a topic. However, sometimes information keeps getting circulated in secondary sources with no one going back to check whether the primary work says what the secondary sources say it does. That is why it is extremely important that a good number of your references be from the primary literature. Many of the journals in which you will find articles you will access on-line through the MSU library website. They do not count as website references as described below.

You may use one website reference for this paper and information from this source should not dominate the paper. The great bulk of material on the web does not go through any peer-review process so anyone can put anything out there--essentially there is no quality control. Papers in scientific journals go through a peer-review process, being reviewed by two or three experts in a field before they are published, providing some quality control. You should make electronic copies of all your primary references so that you can read them and evaluate them. You can use web references for a starting point to find papers in the primary or secondary literature.

Resources from which to find references:

1. Use the MSU Library’s Online catalog to search for books on your topic. Information in books tends to be older than information published in journals but may still be valuable.

2. Electronic databases--Members of the MSU community have access to many electronic databases that provide information on references available in different fields. The databases generally cover journal articles published in the last eight to ten years and they vary in the numbers and types of journals they cover. One example of how to access an electronic resource, Biological Abstracts, is below.

Biological Abstracts are volumes that contain abstracts from all the scientific papers published by year. To search Biological Abstracts:

Click on E-Resources from the MSU library home page ( E-Resources is found under the Resources tab.

Click on Indexes under E-Resources (left side of page).

Under Browse Indexes by Subjectclick on Biological Sciences. Then Go.

Click on Biological Abstracts.

Login if necessary.

Type in appropriate search words.

Click on Search.

Please note that to the right side of the boxes where you type in terms to search there are other boxes where you can specify which part of articles you are interested in. For example, you can pick “title” and if an article has one of your terms in the title, it will show up in the search. Or, you could use an author’s name as a search term and choose “author” in the box below. If a journal is not available on-line, you will need to get its call number and find it in the library. If a journal is not in the library, you can get it through inter-library loan.

Keep in mind that these are starting points for finding references related to your topic. Articles may seem too specific for you to use but you will usually find more general references in the introduction of a paper. Also, many appropriate articles may be listed in a paper's reference list. This is particularly important for finding older references that are not listed in many of the electronic databases.

References for your assignment should be in the format below. Make sure that all information is in the appropriate order with italics used where necessary. You may not list a reference in the reference list using, for example, Smith et al. You must include the names of all the authors in the reference list. If you don’t, it suggests that you did not go to the original reference but merely copied the reference out of another source. Points will be deducted for not using these formats.

Journal article:

Burke, M.J. and L.C. Bliss. 1970. Influence of environmental temperature on metabolic rates, growth rate, and survival of tadpoles of tree frogs. Journal of Herptile Ecophysiology 23:247-260.

Book:

Fritts, H. 1976. Tree rings. Academic Press, New York.

Chapter in book:

Villard, M.-A., E.V. Schmidt, and B.A. Maurer. 1998. Contributions of spatial modeling to avian conservation. Pages 49-64 In: J.M. Marzluff and R. Sallabanks (eds.), Avian conservation: Research and Management, Island Press, Washington, D.C.

Website:

United States National Library of Medicine [Internet]. Bethesda, Maryland; updated 2002 Apr 10. Available from: http// Date accessed Sept. 30, 2013.

Oral Presentation Grading SheetScore______

Name ______

I. Content of Presentation

A. Introduction to topic and its significance (5).____

B. Body of the presentation, current knowledge

hypotheses/evidence (9).____

C. Information about focal studies (9).____

D. How we make progress (5).____

E. Take-home messages (2).____

II. Effectiveness of Presentation

A. Presentation was well organized, with a consistent____

sequence of topics (5).

B. Graphics and text were clearly visible andaesthetically pleasing (5).____

C. Presenters explained concepts welland could answer questions (5).____

D. Presenters spoke in a clear voice, easily understandable

from the back of the room, without distracting habits (5).____

Written Paper Grading SheetScore______

Name______

Content of Paper

A. Title (2). ____

B. Introduction to topic and its significance (15).____

C. Body of the presentation, current knowledge, hypotheses/evidence(20).____

D. Information about focal studies you discuss(23).____

E. How we make progress (10).____

F. Take-home messages (5)_____

Structure of Paper

A. Paper was well organized, with a consistent

sequence of topics (5).____

B. Paper was well-written in terms of use of paragraphs, punctuation, grammar,

and sentence structure (10). ____

C. References were up-to-date, appropriate, cited in paper, and listed correctly at back of

Paper(10). ____

Academic honesty and use of sources

In completing the research paper assignment you should integrate information from a variety of sources to create a unique product. To do so, you must refrain from copying any information word for word from any source (including journal articles, books, and websites). Any information you use should be paraphrased and should be attributed to the proper sources. This means the bulk of your research paper will need references cited within the text of the paper.

For example: Several bird species lay eggs in the nests of plain-fronted thornbirds in Venezuela (Lindell 1996). Then the full citation for this reference will be in the Literature Cited section of your paper.

Please refrain from using quotations. Having to rephrase someone else's words ensures that you understand the information. Students sometimes wonder how often they need to cite references within a paper--every sentence? every paragraph? If you use a couple statements from one author in succession one citation should be sufficient. If you are using more than two statements by one author in succession this is usually an indication that you are using too much of that author's work in one section. Remember, your goal is to integrate information from numerous sources. If you merely restate information from one or two sources, a reader might as well go read the original sources.

If you fail to properly cite your sources and/or copy material word for word from any source, you are engaging in plagiarism, a form of academic dishonesty.

It is also unethical to use a paper that you have written in one course for another course. If you speak with an instructor you can sometimes arrange to build on a paper written in another course. However, this must be worked out in advance.

Academic Integrity Policy

Please see the following websiteforMSU regulations, ordinances, and policies regardingacademic honesty and integrity: If I discover that any work you produce for this class, e.g. exams, quizzes, written or oral presentations, violates the policies on this website you will receive no points for that component of the course.

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