Interdisciplinary Research Manual - Units.muohio.edu

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assistance—to deliberately reveal what you don’t know—not to show off what you know
or to demonstrate that you’ve got everything under control. (In the senior project
conference, of course, you give a formal presentation designed to show off what you
know about your topic, but that presentation is public, not in workshop.) The point of
these presentations is to help you with a process, not to demonstrate that you’ve produced
some kind of product.
In your five minute oral presentation, state what topic you’re thinking about and
what perspectives you anticipate drawing on; then in a sentence or two state what excites
you about the topic (i.e., the reason you’re focusing on this topic or the reason others
should care about the topic); and then reveal (at greater length) any reservations, qualms,
uncertainties, or worries you have about the topic. Even if you feel you have your topic
pretty well nailed down, your discussions with your advisor may well have raised
concerns about the implications of your topic down the road: e.g., I’m still really excited
about my topic, but my advisor made me realize that if I’m really going to follow through
on it, I’m going to have to learn something about the discipline of economics or the subtopic
of banking that I really didn’t want to deal with; or I’m going to have to collect
some data and I don’t know how to analyze data statistically. The information you
present on your topic and the perspectives you plan to draw on will also be useful when
you all come to organize yourselves into affinity groups. Since you’ve only got five
minutes in which to present, and at least four points to make in that time, it’s probably a
good idea to prepare some notes on what you want to say. (These notes are for your use;
you don’t hand them in to the workshop director. It might be helpful to you, however, to
show them with your advisor and discuss the feedback you got in workshop.)
It’s important to take this opportunity to try your idea for a topic out on a wider
audience than your advisor and immediate circle of friends to see how people from a
range of academic disciplines and interdisciplines respond to the topic. Remember that
you will be writing the project to be understandable and engaging to liberally educated
readers in general, as well as to specialists in your field. You’ve got a sales job to do in
order to interest that general audience in your topic so they’ll read your project. Your
classmates in senior workshop with their wide range of topical interests provide a pretty
good test of how liberally educated readers in general will respond to your project.
Observe how they react to your presentation: are they catching on—picking up on what
you’re saying and why it’s exciting—or are they just sitting there; do their eyes light up
or glaze over?
Giving feedback on presentations. As you listen to presentations, ask yourself:
(1) Do you understand the topic (and does it make any sense to you); (2) Do you see why
this topic is supposed to be interesting; (3) If you were planning to study this topic,
would you draw on the same set of disciplines and interdisciplines, or do you see other
perspectives that would be helpful as well; (4) Do you see another topic or another slant
on that topic that would get even better at the interests of the presenter; and (5) Do you
have any useful response to the concerns or doubts expressed by the presenter? Oral
responses in seminar also need to be succinct if not pithy: you can state a point but you
can’t elaborate it if everyone is to complete their feedback on a project in 5 minutes: to
get even five points aired, each will have to be stated in a minute or less. If you want to
develop a point for the presenter, do so after class.