Presentation

General Comments

You are responsible to remember —

• when your presentation is
• that you need to submit a grade on a presentation within 24 hours after the presentation is given (so if it is given at 2:30 PM on a Wednesday you have until 2:30 PM the following day, Thursday)
• the you need to submit your presentation by 11PM the day after you give it (so that you have a chance to edit it after the presentation if you want to make any changes).

I will not remind anyone of any of these things. Late submissions are ignored.

If using multimedia, most definitely read and follow the instructions on this page: Presentation Basics

Each student gives one presentation.

All presentations are limited to 6 minutes or less so please manage your time! There may be 1-5 minutes of discussion of your presentation, but you should be completed with the presenting part inside of 6 minutes. We sometimes do multiple presentations in a single class sessions. When they do not run on time it has a serious impact on the timing for the rest of the session. If there are two of you scheduled for the same day, please communicate with one another ahead of time (before that day) and plan to present not in the stated order on the schedule but rather in whatever order is the smoothest in terms of technology use.

When multimedia of any type is involved, students should set up ahead of the beginning of class, ready to go.

Sometimes we begin exactly at the start of class, sometimes I make announcements first. In either case, we don't want to watch you set up; get this done before class begins. Not doing so definitely affects the presentation grade.

If you plan to use a laptop, please let me know ahead of time by email so we don't both arrive to class thinking we can plug into the wall. Also, please check ahead of time that your networking works in the presentation room, if you have plans of navigating the web during your presentation.

Grading rubric

Your presentation receives two grades: Students submit a grade to me by email and I grade the presentation as well. When designing your presentation you should review carefully the relevant comments on this page, and check out the template that the students will be using to grade you.

*Remember that we have non-English native speakers in the room. Speak clearly, and don't rush things!

Student rubric:

Cut-and-paste one of the provided templates into your email (see below), answer the questions on it, and send to me within 24 hours after the presentation (so, if given at 3PM, you have until 3PM the next day). Use the subject line:

J155_YOURLASTNAME_yourfirstname keyword.

Use keywords that follow this pattern:

• doppobio
• doppographics
• doppoother
• dopposound
• shigabio
• etc.

Cut-and-paste the appropriate grading template into your email. All I need from you is a letter grade after each question. So, for example:

How well did this presentation help you understand the author's life in terms of his or her thought and literary activity? B+

Your grade is of course never shared with anyone but me.

If you do not submit a grade, your own presentation grade is penalized by 0.2 points (on the 12-pt scale) for each time you do not submit or are late in submitting. (The late penalty is because if you have waited more than 24 hours to send an email, the quality of your submission is suspect to me, and anyway I have probably already graded the student by then and sent a report to him or her.)

My rubric:

Overall principles:

Did you communicate, effectively and within time limits, useful information to students? (Therefore this is product- & performance-based grade, not an effort-based grade.) ("Effectively" = slowly and clearly, focusing on main points and communicating clearly what they are)

Were you accurate and did you document your work? (This is based on my review of your submission.)

Did your presentation needlessly repeat information (sometimes it will be necessary) already presented in other presentations?

In general, students study well for these presentations and then want to say as much of what they learned in the brief time given them. This is not particularly useful. Please use that extensive study to determine what are the best excellent, limited, main points to present.

I will grade you on clarity of presentation (including effective focus on main points), management of time and equipment, usefulness to the themes of the class and of course factual accuracy.

I do not consider it particularly useful just to rely on Wiki or other quickly found Web pages even when they are academically credible. We can just go directly there. Your role is to critically evaluate your situation, get informed, and share main points that are extremely useful to us.

Calculating the category grade

Generally speaking the presentation category grade is a result of all reported students grades averaged into a single figure and my letter grade, which is based on the presentation then a review of the submitted presentation the following day. So the basic formula is: (all student grades + my single grade) / 2. However, if I feel the student grade is odd for some reason, I reserve the right to adjust this basic math result.

Presentation schedule

The presentation schedule in schematic form in on the course outline. (In other words, if you know you are going to give the bio for Doppo, you can find the correct session. It will be listed as something like "Presentations: bio" among the several Doppo sessions.

The pairing of students with presentations is listed on the sidebar, when available.

Post-Presentation submission to me:

Material summarizing the main points of the presentation (when you send the full presentation, include a section at the top, or new powerpoint slides, that identify your main points) is to be emailed ...

• as an attachment to me,
• in a form ready to be uploaded to bSpace,
• by 11PM the day after presentation,
• as an electronic file (.rtf, .pdf, .doc, .ppt only—no .docx or .pptx because some students cannot open these files),
• and will be a possible target for pop-quizzes, tests and the final exam.

Use this subject line:

J155_mypresentation_LASTNAME_classname keyword

So, for example:

J155_mypresentation_SUZUKI_Annie keyword

Attach your file to the email. The file title should follow this template:

presentationauthor_type_classname

So, for example:

Doppo_graphics_Bryant

presentationauthor = one of these seven: Doppo, Shiga, Tanizaki, Kawabata, Mishima, Abe, Yoshimoto

type = one of these four: bio, graphics, other, sound

The four basic types of presentations and making author groups

General comments

There are four types of presentations that cover the biographical details of an author, provide a sense of other writings by that author, share graphics that help us understand that author or the text we are reading, and analysis of sound and voice in the text we are reading.

Making author groups

By the end of Session 01 or Session 02 in some cases, author groups will have been created and group members will decide who among them is responsible for each type of presentation. One group member emails me that information either on the spot or later that same day (since presentations begin immediately. For the report to me, use this subject line: J155_grouproles_presentationauthor. So, for example, J155_grouproles_Doppo.

NOTE: Members of an author group coordinate their presentations so material is not repeated from one presenter to the next.

Documentation

The basic concept for a presentation is for the student to ready widely, get a very good sense of the author who is the topic for that student, and the provide selective, excellent information on that author. This is a major presentation / submission, even if the actual presentation time is brief.

Further, student presentations are made available to other students and, because they are digital, may very well end up on the WWW even if this was not the original intention. To protect the student from copyright issues, documentation is necessary.

Because of the two above points—

1. I ask that you work with reliable academic sources that have identifiable authors, even if a Web-based. the I do allow Wikipedia as an exception, however—it can be used when it seems to be of high quality based on your reading in other source.
2. You must document (cite) all your information. This includes multimedia. I don't require a specific format. In the case of multimedia, where possible, at least provide a title for the Web page and the URL.

Type 1: Biographical details of the author

Tag: Bio

The presentation should be based on the whole of the author's life, but with special emphasis to the time around the composition of the story we read and turning points in his or her personal and professional life.

The student presents an oral report (multimedia optional) that gives an excellent sense of the author's life and work in a general and thematic way, but does not delve all that deeply into specific works. It should, however, give an outline of the major writing of that author across the course of his or her writing career.

Type 2: Graphics related to the author and the stories

Tag: Graphics

The presentation is based all or any one or any combination of these: the author's life, the Japanese story assigned, the additional stories (if any) assigned that are translated into English.

The student presents a multimedia report (print information plus visual and/or aural information) that helps the other students understand the author: his/her era, personal life, family, friends, associates, work, hand-writing, etc. — there are many possibilities. Please avoid just running by a lot of pictures without explanation; fewer slides with good reasons why this is worth looking at is a better approach. You can include other slides at the end that you don't have time to cover in class, but which students can look at later, when they download the file. Please be sure to label your various graphics.

Type 3: Other writings by the author

Tag: Other

The presentation is based on one other writing by the author being studied. It can be read in English, or Japanese, or in English with a bit of browsing of the Japanese.

The student presents (no multimedia allowed, though PowerPoint text slides are OK) on one or more other writings by the author, in translation or the original (no grading difference) that represents the author well and presents to the class in a way to communicate the important aspects of that selection(s). Selection(s) might be something that shows more of the themes similar to what is in the text read for class or it might be something that shows an entirely different side of the author. The student does not give an outline of the author's writings; this has already be presented in the biographical details.

Type 4: Analysis of "sound" and "voice" in the Japanese story read

Tag: Sound

The presentation is based on the Japanese story assigned. In some rare cases, quoting a different author or a different writing by the same author might help illustrate a point, but the purpose is to make a statement about the sound and voice of the Japanese story assigned.

The student considers the "sound" and "voice" of the text being read in class and attempts to make some characterizations of those features. ("Sound" is the actually sound effect of the story when read aloud, but includes sounds evoked through the narration itself: natural sounds, the voices of the characters, music, etc.. "Voice" is the narrative personality that seems to be generated by the way the story is told.) Passages will almost certainly be quoted for this presentation and so onscreen projection of those passages would be very useful. Sound files are also a possibility. Photographs are not welcome: this presentation is about the sounds of the text. Sound files might be useful, but are not expected. Except for the first presentation, the student is expected to draw some similarities and contrasts with other texts read (not all the texts, and not murky associations, but distinguishing characteristics).