We will meet for a roundtable discussion of your projects. My role will be that of an MC, facilitating discussion and making sure everyone is given the opportunity to participate. Your roles will be that of panelists: you’ll mostly be listening to your peers answering questions, posing your own questions, and answering questions directed at yourself.
If everyone comes to this Q & A session with an eagerness to learn, then we should have no problems with bouncing around answering and generating questions. We’ll probably leave our meeting with more questions then answers - but that’s okay! This would be a sign that we all participated well and have a deep thirst for expanding our knowledge. But, I want to make sure we all have some idea of how this session will go, so I’ll detail some expectations and structure below.
Ideally, any question is fair game, but the majority of questions will likely fall into one of the following categories:
Elaborate please! A question of this nature involves asking someone to again discuss the finer details of something from their presentation. Perhaps they gave an example in their presentation that you would really like to hear them explain again. This would be an elaborate please! type of question. To assist with this, presenters please be prepared to share your screen to quickly pull-up any of your slides so that we can again reference your presentations.
Probing questions. These are questions that drive towards things that were left unsaid, or possibly just hinted at, during your peers’ presentation. Due to the time constraints that we have, all of you will necessarily be leaving something out of your presentation, and so probing questions allow for us to explore your topics a little further. For instance, a question of this type might go something like: “Can you describe another example different from the one in your presentation?” Or: “You mentioned Algorithm X - can you give an idea of why it has the running time it does?”
It’s like we’re on a date. Questions of this type are likely ones you didn’t think you could ask. But you can! These should be questions that inquire into your peers’ mind regarding the hows/whys of their topic and research. For example, you could ask something like: “What made you decide to do this topic?” Or, “What issues did you have in researching this topic?” Overall, these it’s like we’re on a date questions are less about the content of the person’s presentation, and more about them: their thoughts regarding the project, how they feel about the topic, etc.
By thinking on my descriptions, I believe you should all easily be able to have one or two questions for every one of your peers. Asking a question of everyone will not be a requirement, but there is a minimal expectation on the number of questions you should be asking. Moreover, all of you should be answering at least one question. Here are the specific requirements regarding your participation in the Q & A session.
Thanks to Dr. Rob Kelvey for sharing this assignment, idea, and instructions. ↩