Giving seminar presentations
Needs to be written
Inform: be transparent
Materials
handout
reserach
powerpoint
Lead into the debate: be honest
This is the most prominent failing: Students give seminar presentations and the end is silence. Neither the professor nor the colleagues have anything to say. You failed to arouse a debate.
The failure can be increased: You create a pseudo-debate in which you ask questions they can answer as you want them to. You will suddenly conduct a pseudo school lesson for 12 year old participants with your colleagues, growups in their early 20s who feel either embarrassed or respond half heartedly so that you survive this presentation.
The problem is usually the dishonesty lurking here. There are no questions you can actually ask, no questions you would actually like to solve. You have not stepped so deeply into the subject matter that it gained a complexity you feel difficult to handle.
The additional problem might be that you feel you should not show any weakness. Give answers, get points - so the maxim. The point is, however, that you get points if you make others interested. Once they realise you have actually run into interesting problems, into problems they could run into if they did similar work, they will feel challenged to give their evaluations of the problem. You know this from situations outside university seminars. People begin to be interested in your work if you can open a considerable problem.
Risk yourself, show what you did and how far you got, think of options you see to solve the particular problem: "I feel this will be the answer if I take these things into account - I do not like this answer at the moment because it has these side effects... etc." this is honest insight into your work you can give if you actually got to the point where things are becoming interesting.
If you do not reach that point - again: state it honestly. You did this, this and that, and felt there is nothing interesting in it to discuss. Then may be others can help you finding the interesting point.
