Student conference

Campus based conference in 2023

Oral presentation and opposition (muntlig presentation och opposition)

Oral presentations during the planned student conference should NOT be longer than 15 minutes. This is a very important constraint. It is also expected that the corresponding oral opposition usually made by two students should be wrapped up within 6-8 minutes including the time available for the authors' responses. For the allocated time slots, the conference schedule will be published in due time. 

Please bear in mind that the presentation serves as an inciter of interest for your report and the most important conclusions. Therefore you must be selective and very well prepared. Think through what you want to say, make notes and prepare a few slides to support your presentation (not too many and avoid overloading slides with information, especially textual). The audience is unlikely to have read your report beforehand so try to be as clear as possible. To this end, you also need to structure the presentation very carefully with the research question, key findings and conclusions at the centre. Please, make an attempt at the same time to discuss the topic and outcome of your investigations in a broader perspective. For example, present your research problem, motivate its relevance and your interest in it, describe what you have done, briefly outline the most important results you have come up with, discuss the importance of your work and problems you have encountered or issues you have not been able to resolve and/or share your thought on the suggested future extensions.

Oral opposition is supposed to stimulate a constructive discussion about the project, its strengths and weaknesses. The key selected comments extracted from the written peer review may serve as your point of departure. However, the main focus is on the presentation, not only its technical quality but also how well it informs about the project: the research question, decisions made by the authors about their approach, key findings and their discussion (have a look also at the checklist for oral presentations). Please, try to balance more general and specific issues, constructively comment on both strengths and weaknesses. Then move on to the central part of the opposition - questions to the presenting students, please formulate your questions in an open way giving an opportunity to the authors to clarify their point of view. Bear in mind however that the time is limited (3-4 min per opponent) so you should concentrate on the most important issues (very detailed questions and particular points of rather minor/secondary importance should be made in a written review). Please use your time effectively as your constructive feedback is a valuable contribution helping the authors improve their reports and a unique opportunity for them to receive feedback on their presentation style and content. A meticulous approach to the peer review process is much appreciated, which can then be acknowledged by the authors in their final report.

Finally, please attend a full session (not only the time slot you assigned to) either as a presenter or opponent.

It is recommended that students familiarise themselves with extra resources and information about oral presentations and opposition made available within the course.

Good luck!