Note: Some of the information below may change, depending on the decision in class about doing a quiz or a research paper. If we decide to do the latter, the length of the presentation may increase from 10 to 15 minutes.
In this assignment, your task is to find interesting concepts, methods, or applications dealing with Artificial Intelligence, and give a short presentation of about ten minutes to your classmates.
Choice of Topics
The easiest way to find information is probably to use the Internet; a few good starting points are the Web sites of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/current.html, the Web sites of AI journals such as the IEEE Computer Society's "Intelligent Systems" journal at http://www.computer.org/intelligent/, and a commercial publication, the PC AI magazine at http://www.pcai.com/ (I'm not sure if this is still being published).
I will make some of the presentations given by students in previous quarters available through Blackboard. You can also browse a collection of snippets from Web pages that I put on the KB/AI Nuggets Evernote Notebook. You may also find some ideas at a related notebook, KM Nuggets. The emphasis here is on Knowledge Management (KM): helping people to utilize more effectively knowledge that is represented on computers.
If you have problems identifying a topic, you can also talk to me, or see Wayne Montgomery at the library, who is the librarian in charge of Computer Science topics.
A list with the current choice of topics and the dates for the presentations will be made available through Blackboard.
Deliverables
You need select a topic in the first two weeks of the quarter, and post a brief description (about 100-200 words long, plus 3-5 references for sources you used, or links to additional information) of your presentation on Blackboard. The presentation should last about ten minutes, and you can use Powerpoint slides or similar. The presentations will be scheduled during class or lab times. Usually the classroom as well as the lab will have a computer projector. If necessary, portable projectors can be obtained from Media Services.
Time Table and Signing Up for Presentations
You can sign up for a presentation date on a form on Blackboard. Initially, only those students who have already selected a topic will be allowed to pick a date, so it will be beneficial to choose a topic early. The selection of a topic and presentation date should be made during the first two weeks of the quarter. After that, I may assign dates, and if necessary, topics, to students. The deadlines for the deliverables depend on your selected or assigned presentation date, and are listed in the table below.
If you already have a topic, and are ready to do a presentation during the first or second week, you can earn extra credit on this assignment.
- Topic selected and approved, and abstract posted on Blackboard: Tuesday of Week 4 (unless your presentation is earlier)
- Draft of presentation (e.g. outline) posted on Blackboard: one week before presentation
- Final version of presentation posted on Blackboard: two days before presentation
The distribution of points I intend to use for the evaluation of this assignment is as follows:
- Abstract and draft version: 20%
- Final version of presentation slides or notes: 30%
- Delivery of presentation: 50%
If you don't have much experience giving presentations, follow this link to some presentation hints.