Please post an initial post with your presentation slide deck as well as a link to your Zoom presentation. Your projects will be graded as follows:
50pts for your oral presentation (10 minutes MAX)
100pts for your proposal (25pts background, 25 points specific aims, 50 pts pitfalls/expected results)
100pts for your replies to 5 proposals (substantive critiques and suggestions for improvement)
50pts for your proposal defense (replies to classmate comments)
This week, of course, is all about your proposal presentations, which will be worth 300 pts of your final grade (including actual propsal, presentation, comments on classmates proposals, and your replies to your classmates critiques.) Given the importance, you will have until Sunday to post.
A few tips as you work:
The most important thing is to make sure you have a clear idea of what the aims of your project are. These should be specific, concrete questions not something like “I want to find out more about this disease”. Below in the course annoucements I have linked a pdf with an actual front page for an NIH submitted grant – if you look you can see that the Specific Aims (there are 3 in this case, anywhere from 1-3 is ok, I would not make more than 3) are written out in a brief, clear description, and then for each experiment proposed there is a rationale for how this experiment helps address your aim.
Include 2-3 slides as background – this will help set up the problem and let people know why it is important. Don’t assume people know! Remember you (presumably) have spend several weeks researching this topic and the rest of us have not.
Lastly, make sure you include sections on your expected results, potential difficulties you might encounter and backup plans in case problems arise.
Also, remember that this must be original research. It doesn’t necessarily need to be the most groundbreaking idea ever (we aren’t expecting you to cure cancer) but if you propose somehting that is already published research we will notice, so please do enough background reading to make sure that is not the case.
About the presentations:
You will be graded on presentation style as well as content. Make sure that the most important points you are trying to make on each slide are written out rather than just said; however, you should avoid making slides too busy with walls of text. Imagine that you are in the audience for this talk – you would want to be able to look away for a few seconds and still be able to get the main idea. In general, clear and professional is more important than fancy graphics.
**I WILL BE UPLOADING A DRAFT OF MY PROPOSAL AND PRESENTATION TO ASSIST WITH THIS TASK **