Internal Guidelines
The main aim of the II colloquium is to provide a forum where
participants can broaden their horizon, where ideas can be discussed,
and where cooperation and social integration between participants is
stimulated. In order to achieve these aims, the II group has put
together a set of guidelines for presenters, audience, and
organization.
Presenter
Preparation
At least one week in advance, title and abstract should be e-mailed to
the organizer of the colloquium. For PhD (and MSc) students: consider
involving your supervisor in preparing for the presentation, so that
you will get the most out of it.
Improve your skills - ask
for feedback
Students are offered the possibility to use the colloquium to improve
their presentation skills.
It is highly recommended for students to exploit this opportunity so
they can improve their transferable skill set.
The procedure is as follows:
The
student selects a small group of people
(preferably 3 to 4 people) to
provide him/her with feedback (privately!) after the presentation.
There should
be at least one staff member in this group, but note that this does not
have to
be the student’s own supervisor. In fact, it may be better to ask
someone other
than the supervisor, to get some alternative feedback for once. The
other
people can be anyone the student trusts with this task or that the
student feels
comfortable with. When unsure who to ask or how to ask them,
students can always ask for help from their supervisor or from the
organiser of the colloquium.
In order to receive concrete and focused feedback, students are recommended to think of certain
points that they’d like their group of people to pay special attention to. Things that might require special
attention can
range from the structure of the talk, timing, or sheets, all the way to
pronunciation,
pausing between sentences or slides, posture, or even interaction with
the
public.
After the talk, the audience leaves, but the people who were asked for
feedback
will linger a bit longer (say 10 minutes or so), to provide the student
with constructive
feedback. NB: This
is supposed
to be an equal conversation, not a one-sided evaluation/jury.
We hope
this will add an additional layer to the II Colloquium and that it will
provide
students with valuable tips and tricks that they can deploy during
future
presentations, job interviews, or their PhD defence.
Type of presentation
A wide variety of types of presentations can be considered. The
presentation may, for example, focus on presenting an interesting new
result, a demo, a small pilot of an experiment, a survey of a
particular area, a problem that you are currently facing in your
research, an interesting paper that you have come across, a paper that
is about to be submitted (where the audience can give comments to
improve it), etc.
Style
In order to make the colloquium interesting and engaging for the
presenter as well as for the audience, make sure that you reach out to
the audience. An academic audience tends to like an intellectual
exercise, so you can try to let them think along with you and to
discuss open problems or (initial) results. Make it clear what the
objective of your presentation is, and if a specific kind of feedback
is seeked, then ask for this at the beginning of the talk. Standard
forms on which the audience can provide feedback on content and
presentation style are available from the organizer. For example, your
objective may be to learn to explain things to people less familiar
with your research topic, or to get comments from the audience on how
they view your research.
Length
The colloquium should not take longer than 45 minutes in total.
Depending on the aim and type of your presentation, make sure that it
does not take longer than 20-30 minutes, in order to leave enough time
for questions and discussion.
Content
Since the II group has members from diverse backgrounds, it is
important to present the context for your work and to explain its
relevance, both in general as well as for the II group in particular.
This may include, for example, an overview of current challenges in the
field. Also, be careful and make sure that the audience can still
follow you when using formulas and equations that may require expert
knowledge in order to understand them. In order to stimulate
discussion, you can, e.g., consider explicitly incorporating possible
discussion topics in your slides.
Audience
Attendance
Research personnel of the II group is expected to attend the
colloquium. In case of an internal speaker, the reason is that II
members are expected to show interest in the work of colleagues. In
case of a guest speaker, attending the colloquium (even if the topic is
not directly related to your research) is seen as an act of courtesy.
MSc students are strongly encouraged to attend several colloquia, to
get inspiration and more background for the master's thesis research.
Participation
The presenter will make an effort to make it an engaging presentation.
The audience can support this through an active attitude, for example,
by asking questions if something is not clear. The audience is expected
to be on time.
Organizer
Announcements
The organizer is responsible for maintaining the colloquium website and
for sending out the announcements.
Frequency/timing
The colloquium will be held on Tuesdays at 15:30 hours.
It will be held with a frequency of once every two weeks, with breaks
over
summer and Christmas. Several colloquium talks will be held by guest
speakers. There will be one presenter per colloquium. This means that
if an unexpected guest arrives to give a colloquium talk while there is
already a talk scheduled for that same week, the colloquium scheduled
for that week will be moved to another time slot. The variety of
research topics in the II group will be reflected in the topics of the
colloquia.
Social aspects
Networking and cooperation will be stimulated by providing drinks after
the colloquium. A couple of colloquia with guest speakers will be
"pimped" through more elaborate announcements, a thank-you gift, etc.
Other points worth mentioning
Before
the start of each colloquium, staff announcements can be made. This
means that, in the week before the colloquium, the organizers should
ask the staff (e.g. Catholijn or Koen) whether they have any
announcements to make at the beginning of the colloquium, and if so,
how much time should be reserved for announcements, so they can be
taken into account when scheduling the talk and keeping things within
time.