Guidance for Project Presentations (Urban 5111)
Students are required to do a presentation on their project. This is worth 20% of your grade for the course.
Previously students have delivered their presentations in a face-to-face setting in Week 10 of the course. However, given that some students might not be able to finish their projects by Week 10 and that there are high class numbers, it has been decided that students will pre-record their presentation and upload them to Moodle no later than 12 Noon (UK time) on Thursday 21st
December 2023. The following information is designed to provide you with guidance on doing your presentation, please read it carefully.
Guidelines for the presentation:
1. Your presentation should be 7 to 8 minutes long. When we are marking the presentations, we
will stop watching (and marking) at 8 minutes and 10 seconds – any content recorded after
this will not be included in the assessment and you will lose marks for not keeping to time.
2. Your presentation must have an audio commentary of you presenting your work (you cannot
just upload slides).
3. Please speak as clearly as possible when recording your presentation. There can be a
temptation when doing a presentation to speak very quickly because you are either nervous
or have too much information to present. Please avoid speaking very quickly as this makes it
much harder to understand what you are saying. If I can’t understand what you are saying, I
cannot give you marks for the parts where I can’t understand as I won’t know whether what
you said was worthy of marks.
4. Your presentation must start by you introducing yourself and giving your Glasgow University
Identification Number (GUID).
5. You must have an opening slide (e.g., a PowerPoint slide) which gives your GUID.
6. Your presentation should be an outline of what will be going into your final report. You should
therefore include the following in your presentation:
o An opening slide with your GUID and a title for your project.
o An introduction to your project and your research questions.
o A discussion on data and methods used in your project.
o The results – what have your major finding been?
o Preliminary discussion and conclusions.
7. It is strongly recommended that you have slides/visual aids (e.g., PowerPoint slides). This will
help you focus your presentation and also will enable the viewer to see the work that you’ve
done and the maps that you have produced. This is a good way of you showing off your GIS
skills.
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Recording your presentation
There are a number of ways of recording your presentation. Which method you use is up to you
and I recommend using the method you feel most comfortable/experienced with. If you want a
very straightforward way of recording your presentation, I recommend using Zoom (which is
how I recorded the lectures for the online courses in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic). To
prerecord a presentation using Zoom follow these instructions:
1. Start a new meeting in Zoom.
2. To share your screen, use the “share screen” option (this allows the viewer to see your slides).
You can choose to share your screen during your presentation, or you can set it up before you
start to record (I share my screen before starting to record).
3. To record:
a. If you have shared your screen before recording, then go to “More” and then select
“Record to the cloud”.
b. If you want to record before you share your screen, then you just need to click record
and then select “record to the cloud”.
4. You can pause the recording at any point (just remember to re-start it!).
5. When you have finished recording:
a. If you are still in shared screen mode, go to “More” and then select “End recording”.
b. If you are not in shared screen mode, just click “stop recording.”
6. Click “End Meeting” to finish the session.
7. Zoom will send you an email notification when your video is ready. Click on the link in the
email and you will be taken to the recordings pages.
8. Find the recording you want to share.
9. Click on the “Share” button.
10. Unselect “Passcode protection” (if you don’t do this the viewer will need the passcode to be
able to watch the video). Then click “done”.
11. Then click on “Copy shareable link”.
12. If you wish to download your video, you can also download it from the same webpage.
The above instructions are for recording using Zoom. You are welcome to use other methods of
recording your presentation – but I cannot provide technical support for other methods.
Transcriptions: some video editing tools (such as Zoom) automatically transcribes your
presentation. These transcriptions are not always very accurate (particularly with technical
terms). Please DO NOT worry about the transcript. It is usually possible for you to edit transcripts
but in this instance, this is not a good use of your time. Just ignore the transcript – the quality of
it will not be included in the mark and it is not essential that you have a transcript.
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Use of cameras
It is up to you whether you have your camera on or off when recording the presentation.
I personally think presentations are better when you can see the person as it adds a human
element and enables me to use non-verbal cues to help me better understand you. The
presentations are normally done in a face-to-face session where the presenter can be seen, and
so having the camera on better replicates a more traditional presentation environment. The
presentations will only be seen by those involved with marking and running the course. You will
not be marked on whether you have your camera on or off. I know that many people don’t like
having their cameras on because they don’t want their background to be seen – that is very
understandable but can also be avoided if you use a background.
If, however, there are reasons why you would prefer to have your camera switched off then you
can pre-record the presentation with just an audio commentary. It is important to point out that
YOU MUST HAVE AUDIO COMMENTARY.
It is likely that many of you will apply for jobs over the next year and it is also likely that you will
have to do a presentation for these where you have your camera on. This presentation will be
good practice for things like online interviews.
Uploading your presentation to Moodle
Unless you have an extension, you MUST upload your presentation to Moodle by 12 Noon on 21st
December 2023. If you do not do this, you will be penalised (you will lose marks in line with
University policy).
Please upload your presentation to Moodle in the section titled “Turnitin”— Principles and
Applications of GIS – Project Presentation. If you are uploading a digital file this MUST have your
GUID in the file name.
If you are uploading a weblink to your presentation (for example you used Zoom and recorded to
the cloud) you will not be able to rename this to include your GUID. Instead, please open a word
processing document (such as Microsoft Word) put the weblink into that document, save that
document using your GUID as the file name e.g., Presentation_2511111.doc and then upload that
to Moodle.
Feedback
You will receive your feedback and mark for the presentation at the same time as you receive
your mark for project. This is likely to be in the middle of January.