foreign exchange currency

1. Research Findings,

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1. Student’s Comments & Opinion (evaluate the article, link it to your course topic(s), and explain if it enhances your understanding of your course topic).

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1. Oral presentation[endnoteRef:3] (6 - 12 slides) (5 %) [3: The Presentation should be prepared using a Microsoft Office PowerPoint. Ten Simple Rules for Making Good Oral Presentations Rule 1: Talk to the Audience We do not mean face the audience, although gaining eye contact with as many people as possible when you present is important since it adds a level of intimacy and comfort to the presentation. We mean prepare presentations that address the target audience. Be sure you know who your audience is—what are their backgrounds and knowledge level of the material you are presenting and what they are hoping to get out of the presentation? Off-topic presentations are usually boring and will not endear you to the audience. Deliver what the audience wants to hear. Rule 2: Less is More A common mistake of inexperienced presenters is to try to say too much. They feel the need to prove themselves by proving to the audience that they know a lot. As a result, the main message is often lost, and valuable question time is usually curtailed. Your knowledge of the subject is best expressed through a clear and concise presentation that is provocative and leads to a dialog during the question-and-answer session when the audience becomes active participants. At that point, your knowledge of the material will likely become clear. If you do not get any questions, then you have not been following the other rules. Most likely, your presentation was either incomprehensible or trite. A side effect of too much material is that you talk too quickly, another ingredient of a lost message. Rule 3: Only Talk When You Have Something to Say Do not be overzealous about what you think you will have available to present when the time comes. Research never goes as fast as you would like. Remember the audience's time is precious and should not be abused by presentation of uninteresting preliminary material. Rule 4: Make the Take-Home Message Persistent A good rule of thumb would seem to be that if you ask a member of the audience a week later about your presentation, they should be able to remember three points. If these are the key points you were trying to get across, you have done a good job. If they can remember any three points, but not the key points, then your emphasis was wrong. It is obvious what it means if they cannot recall three points! Rule 5: Be Logical Think of the presentation as a story. There is a logical flow—a clear beginning, middle, and an end. You set the stage (beginning), you tell the story (middle), and you have a big finish (the end) where the take-home message is clearly understood. Rule 6: Treat the Floor as a Stage Presentations should be entertaining, but do not overdo it and do know your limits. If you are not humorous by nature, do not try and be humorous. If you are not good at telling anecdotes, do not try and tell anecdotes, and so on. A good entertainer will captivate the audience and increase the likelihood of obeying Rule 4. Rule 7: Practice and Time Your Presentation This is particularly important for inexperienced presenters. Even more important, when you give the presentation, stick to what you practice. It is common to deviate, and even worse to start presenting material that you know less about than the audience does. The more you practice, the less likely you will be to go off on tangents. Visual cues help here. The more presentations you give, the better you are going to get. In a scientific environment, take every opportunity to do journal club and become a teaching assistant if it allows you to present. An important talk should not be given for the first time to an audience of peers. You should have delivered it to your research collaborators who will be kinder and gentler but still point out obvious discrepancies. Laboratory group meetings are a fine forum for this. Rule 8: Use Visuals Sparingly but Effectively Presenters have different styles of presenting. Some can captivate the audience with no visuals (rare); others require visual cues and in addition, depending on the material, may not be able to present a particular topic well without the appropriate visuals such as graphs and charts. Preparing good visual materials will be the subject of a further Ten Simple Rules. Rule 7 will help you to define the right number of visuals for a particular presentation. A useful rule of thumb for us is if you have more than one visual for each minute you are talking, you have too many and you will run over time. Obviously some visuals are quick, others take time to get the message across; again Rule 7 will help. Avoid reading the visual unless you wish to emphasize the point explicitly, the audience can read, too! The visual should support what you are saying either for emphasis or with data to prove the verbal point. Finally, do not overload the visual. Make the points few and clear. Rule 9: Review Audio and/or Video of Your Presentations There is nothing more effective than listening to, or listening to and viewing, a presentation you have made. Violations of the other rules will become obvious. Seeing what is wrong is easy, correcting it the next time around is not. You will likely need to break bad habits that lead to the violation of the other rules. Work hard on breaking bad habits; it is important. Rule 10: Provide Appropriate Acknowledgments People love to be acknowledged for their contributions. Having many gratuitous acknowledgements degrades the people who actually contributed. If you defy Rule 7, then you will not be able to acknowledge people and organizations appropriately, as you will run out of time. It is often appropriate to acknowledge people at the beginning or at the point of their contribution so that their contributions are very clear. As a final word of caution, we have found that even in following the Ten Simple Rules (or perhaps thinking we are following them), the outcome of a presentation is not always guaranteed. Audience–presenter dynamics are hard to predict even though the metric of depth and intensity of questions and off-line follow-up provide excellent indicators. Sometimes you are sure a presentation will go well, and afterward you feel it did not go well. Other times you dread what the audience will think, and you come away pleased as punch. Such is life. As always, we welcome your comments on these Ten Simple Rules by Reader Response. Also read Ten Qualities of an Effective PowerPoint Presentation Uses the right PowerPoint design The design you choose should depend on the audience and the way you plan to present. Use blues and greens to make your audience feel good or relaxed about a topic. Use bright colors like reds and yellows to get an audience excited and happy. Using high contrast, such as dark backgrounds with light lettering or light backgrounds with dark lettering, will make your presentation easier to read when projected on a screen.  2. Designed and formatted appropriately for the audience Slides and handouts are your support material; the primary message should come from you. Each slide can include a few main points; you can talk more about them in your discussion. Limit your slides and only include necessary information. Too many slides and too much information will loose your audiences’ attention. 3. Tightly focused on the subject Is your audience familiar with the topic? If they know nothing about it, make sure you define the basic terms. If they’re experts, follow-up with questions and plan on using hidden slides to support your answers. 4. Includes the right amount of text and appropriate font Your audience will pay more attention to you if they are not trying to read paragraphs of text at the same time. Make your presentation easy to read by selecting an appropriate text size and font. Use Sans-Serif fonts (without ‘feet’ or ‘tails’) in headings or short lines. Use Serif (with ‘feet’ or ‘tails’) in paragraphs of text, which is easier to read. 5. Uses artwork purposefully Images, WordArt and clipart should enhance the presentation, not overwhelm your audience. Younger audiences may enjoy flashy images while older participants want more substance, less flash. Uses graphs and charts rather than raw columns of numbers Several types of graphs and charts are available; choose one that’s appropriate for your presentation. Uses sounds and video to create interest, but does not allow effects to dominate Add multimedia effects after the content and overall image of your presentation is solid. Don’t let the bells and whistles outshine your presentation, keep the main focus on you. Uses animation and transitions if appropriate Even the most boring presentation can benefit from animation and transition. Animations are simple movements of the objects on a slide. Transitions are animated ways of moving from slide to slide. If animation and transitions are used, be consistent. Offers audience handouts If you give handouts before the presentation, will people read them and not listen to your talk? If you wait until after the presentation, are people writing like mad trying to take their own notes? There’s no real solution, decide what’s best and makes the most sense for you. Concludes with question and answer session Leave a few minutes at the conclusion of your talk to answer questions from your audience. They will leave your presentation knowing you took the extra time to address their concerns and listen to their comments. ]

Presentation marks will be awarded for:

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1. Delivery: enthusiastic, confident, interested, interesting, audible.

1. Appropriate use of technology.

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