ORAL HOMEWORK GUIDELINES

Overview

For an oral homework assignment, groups of students will be given several problems in advance. They should solve these problems, write down personal notes, and prepare for making a live presentation of the solution to the instructor using a whiteboard.

Scheduling Presentation Times

Each group will schedule a presentation time with the professor. A signup sheet will typically be distributed during classtime prior to the due date.

Collaboration Policy

Students should form groups for completing the assignment. Members of a group should work together in advance of the presentation session in discussing the problems, developing solutions, and preparing for the presentation session. Each member in a group will present at least one problem from a given homework set. The assignment of who presents what will be chosen randomly by the instructor at the beginning of the presentation session. Therefore, every member of the group should be well prepared to present any of the problems.

Those not presenting should for the most part remain quiet, unless either the instructor or the person presenting requests help or clarification from another group member. The presenter is allowed to ask a homework partner, if he or she is totally stuck and can't remember how to solve the problem. However, the group will lose points for this, so try to avoid it! Make sure you all know how to solve every problem, so that you can try for full credit. However, if your answer is wrong and you can't fix it, you are better off asking for help and getting partial credit if your partner can get it correct - you'll only lose a few points off the total, so that is better than a 0.

Grades for the overall assignment will be based on the combination of all problems that are presented, with the composite score being assigned to all individuals in the group.

How To Present

The audience here will be considered "experts", since I'll obviously be familiar with the background material and the problem at hand. So you don't need to explain big O notation or any other background from the class, and you don't need to provide motivation. (After all, your motivation is probably that I assigned it!)

• Aim to present your solutions in 5 minutes. This is probably a bit ambitious, especially during the first weeks. However, I will stop you after 10 minutes on one problem, so you should practice giving your solution quickly and accurately! Ideally, you will want to write out your solution, even if you don't need to turn it in. Very often you will only find a bug in the solution when trying to write it down, and even if it is correct, you will improve your presentation by first writing out the argument to clarify it in your own mind.
• Don't dwell on the details! Assume that the listener, who is after all the instructor for the class, is familiar with the topics from class. If the solution only differs from something presented in class by a small detail, say that! For example, if the problem is dealing with minimum spanning trees, saying "The algorithm is identical to Kruskal's MST algorithm, except after each edge is chosen, we insert an extra step in which the maximum weight edge between any pair of distinct components is removed from the graph entirely- thus - it can never be used as an edge again" is quite sufficient! (Assuming, of course, that this is the correct solution to the problem.)
• Don't forget the proof of correctness and runtime analysis. Highlight the main points of these arguments. Your job is simply to convince me that you understand the proof. So (for example) don't worry too much about base cases in an oral presentation, unless they are somehow unusual or especially important. While they are necessary in a formal writeup, they are usually unimportant in an oral presentation.

Interaction with the instructor

During your presentation, I may interrupt, ask questions, provide or ask for clarifying comments, point out flaws or counterexamples, or any other similar behavior. (Don't worry, I won't usually throw anything to get your attention.) Usually this can be taken as an indication that either you haven't made things clear or there is an error. It might also be that you've assumed too much of your tired, stressed, and overworked instructor. In any case, don't panic, because I'm not out to get you; just answer the questions to the best of your ability.

Part of the value is that you can get immediate, real-time feedback on your solutions. However, at some point it is very likely that you will find out that something is incorrect or unclear in a problem you are presenting. Don't panic! You can still get partial credit for these problems, and may even be able to fix the solution. Part of the value of this experience is learning to think on your feet while communicating your solutions.

Within reason, the instructor may allow you to react and modify your solutions. However, full points for content will only be awarded when initial solutions are correct. Yes, we realize that this gives oral presentation an advantage over written homework, since you are more likely to fix errors and get partial credit. Enjoy it!