Class Presentations

During the quarter students will be asked to give presentations in each of the informatics sessions that generally occur on the Wednesday of each week. The total length of the presentation should be about 10 minutes for each student, even if two students are presenting (so two students will take 20 minutes). Depending on the number of students we will aim to have each student give two such presentations during the quarter.

Each student presentation should be in the form of a journal club reporting on one of the assigned informatics readings associated with a biological topic presented in a Monday session. The assigned reading will generally describe current informatics research related to the topic.

In general the presentation should give an overview of the problem(s) the article is addressing, how the methods described in the article address this problem, the methods and results, and what still needs to be done. Since these topics generally reflect the organization of most articles a reasonable presentation format is to follow the organization of the paper. In addition, most articles will address key information representation and management issues that arise out of the biological topic presented in the Monday session or in a previous biology session. Thus, the student should discuss the relevant biological issues this paper is addressing as part of the overview. The presentation should end with questions and topics for discussion by the class as a whole.

Following the student presentation (and possibly after some discussion) the instructor will often (but not always) choose one student for each assigned reading not described by the main presenters. This student will be asked to describe the content of the selected paper, in a similar manner as the assigned student, but with no prepared slides. Performance on this presentation will be recorded, and will count towards the class participation portion of the final grade. The intent is partially to be sure all students have read all the papers, partially to assess the ability of students to present information without preparing ahead of time other than reading the material, and mostly to ensure we have a good class discussion.