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COMP 523: Software Engineering

Assignment 10: Tech Talk

Tech talks will occur in class, 3 talks per class session, between Monday, November 1st and Wednesday, December 1st, as listed on the calendar.

Due

One member of your team should submit your team’s tech talk topic and top 3 date preferences (see the calendar) by email to me (terrell@cs.unc.edu) by Sunday, October 18th. I will assign presentation dates as soon as possible afterwards. Note that, in the event that two teams want the same topic, the first one to email me (both the topic and the date preferences) wins.

Then, on your assigned date in class, you will present your topic.

Context

You’ve been learning about some cool technologies this semester in your project. Share some of that knowledge with the class, and get practice preparing and delivering a team presentation. (Remember that this course carries a communications intensive (CI) label.)

Requirements

Prepare a 20-minute presentation on some topic that:

Each team member should participate in both the preparation and delivery of the presentation.

By the time you deliver your talk, post your presentation (as a PPT or PDF file or a link to a Google Slides online document) to your project web site.

For full credit, incorporate some element of active learning in your presentation; that is, involve the audience somehow. Is there a way for people to follow along with a tutorial or demo on their laptops? In the past, teams have used Code Sandbox or some other online code editor (Codepen, JS Fiddle) to let people edit relevant code and see its result without installing any software. Remember that you will need to share the URL with people somehow, so it may be wise to add a link from your project web site. If your presentation is missing an active learning element, your tech talk will receive at best a grade of B.

Hints

Rehearse as a team to get the timing right. As little as 15 minutes is fine, or as much as 24. (We’re trying to get through 3 teams in a 75-minute class session, including swap time.) When I give talks, I sometimes rehearse more than 10 times to really get it down. Not that you have to do that, but it can make the difference between a decent presentation and a great one, if you’re feeling ambitious.

To give you an idea of what topics are possible, here are the topics from last semester: