Oral Presentations

When you work as an engineer, expect to give oral presentations. Assume you'll be called upon for an impromptu presentation during a meeting where colleagues are discussing progress on a project. Know that you will be asked to prepare a presentation that includes visuals that accompany your words. Consider it routine to respond to questions from supervisors about your work. Audiences will vary from colleagues to clients to municipal planning agencies to the general public. The size of the audience will vary from a single supervisor to a group at a conference table to a filled auditorium. Sometimes you will speak alone; other times you will be presenting as part of a team. Public speaking is going to be a routine part of your engineering career; so, it is important that this class provides opportunities to develop your skills if you haven't done oral presentation work before or to refine your skills if you are already an experienced speaker.

There will be two specific oral presentation activities during the semester.

The User Manual Presentation: The concluding activity for this collaborative project requires each team to present its user manual to the class. The class will assume the roles of engineers gathered at a corporate meeting to listen to each team and then adopt the best manual for publication. Each presentation will last about 15 minutes. Each member of each team will be expected to speak for at least three minutes. Visuals will be needed to show results of the primary research work and an example of the user manual. Further details relating to the organization and presentation will be discussed in class in conjunction with the reading of Markel, Ch. 22.

The Technical Proposal Presentation: Near the end of the semester when the written Technical Proposal is about finished, each student will give a 10 to 15 minute formal oral presentation. The imagined audience will be representatives of the RneedsU Foundation that published a call for proposals. This is not a report on progress with the work; rather, it is intended to be a leadership statement that persuades the audience to fund a project. You'll have in mind that the foundation has limited financial resources and that you are competing for a share of the funds to address a specific problem. Imagine a time in the future when, as an engineer for a firm that has developed a proposal in response to a government request, you are assigned to make the speech that wins the contract. This is a formal speaking activity and it requires the use of visual aids in addition to what is said. Each student will create PowerPoint slides and/or other necessary visual for the presentation. In class, time will be taken to organize the essential parts of the speech. Markel, Ch. 22 will be helpful.

Evaluation Teams will be organized to enable each speaker to receive formal peer evaluations and to represent members of the foundation who will want to ask questions after each presentations. Team and member responsibilities are noted on the Grading page.

See Grading for more information about the Oral Presentation assignment

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