Oral Project Update

The Oral Project Update is a short presentation (5 minutes maximum) done during class. Your goals are two-fold: 1) provide a high-level overview of your project and 2) detail your past, current and future plans for the quarter.

A good rule of thumb is that each slide takes 1 minute. Practice (A LOT!) and time yourself to make sure that you are under the limit. You will be timed and stopped promptly at the 5-minute mark. We will hold questions until the end of the talk; those do not count toward the 5 minutes.

Slides should not have a lot of text (pictures/diagrams/figures/charts are worth a thousand words). You should not read off your slides. One person can give the presentation, or multiple people. If the latter, make sure to practice your handoffs.

Here is an approximate outline. You don’t need to follow this; you should do what is best for your project. But this serves as one example of how you could structure your talk.

  • Overview: Motivate your project. Describe the key problems and how your overall project will address these problems.
  • Project Objectives: What will you accomplish this quarter? What are the deliverables? What are your milestones? How do they fit into the overall project?
  • Accomplishment/Demos: What have you done so far? Can you demonstrate this to the class?
  • Quarter Plan: Overview of the remaining milestones until the end of the quarter. Gantt charts, tables, diagrams, mapping tasks to specific team members, etc., can convey such information well.
  • Conclusion