Guidelines for In-Class Presentations (CHEM 30CL)

Where and When

In-class presentations will be held at the following times and locations:

- Tuesday, December 3 (11:00 am), Location TBA (Section 1A required to attend)
- Tuesday, December 3 (3:00 pm), Location TBA (Section 1B required to attend)
- Wednesday, December 4 (11:00 am), Location TBA (Section 1C required to attend)
- Wednesday, December 4 (3:00 pm), Location TBA (Section 1D required to attend)

Topic and Format

For this in-class presentation, you will be working in teams of two.

Each team will give a “research talk” based on one laboratory experiment that we have
performed in CHEM 30CL. After each presentation, there will be 15 minutes reserved for a Q &
A session. Each team member will answer a question selected from the Question List (to be
posted on CCLE), which may involve drawing structures/mechanisms on the board. Each team
member will then have the option of answering an extra credit question.

Requirements

The presentation should be 10–12 minutes in length (corresponding, roughly, to the same
number of powerpoint slides). Please time your presentations beforehand to make sure it does
not go on for too long! Each presentation should consist of the following segments:

1. Title Slide
The title slide should consist of a descriptive but concise title of your study, the names of
your team members, and the date of the presentation.

2. Introduction
Explain to your audience why your experiment is significant. For instance, if you’re
talking about Wittig reactions, you should explain why is it important to make alkenes, what
makes the Wittig a powerful/important method to access alkenes, the current understanding of
the Wittig mechanism, and anything that you think would get the audience interested in what
you’ve got to say!

3. Research Question/Research Objectives/Research Hypothesis

Clearly state your research question, whether it is a specific one (e.g. “We wanted to
investigate counterion effects on E/Z outcomes”) or a more general, diffuse one (e.g. “We wanted
to synthesize different derivatives of X to see if it impacts Y). In lieu of a research question, you
can also provide clear objectives for performing the experiment.
If you formulated a hypothesis prior to performing the experiment, you should also
clearly state your hypothesis, as well as provide your rationalization for proposing it. (You do not
need to include a hypothesis if you did not formulate one beforehand.)

4. Experimental Procedure
Explain what specific experiment(s) you (and your collaborators) conducted. This might
entail, among other things, showing a scheme/flow chart of your reaction, the reaction conditions
(anhydrous/air-free, etc), analytical methods (NMR, IR, TLC, etc.) used to assess experimental
outcome, and so on. If you formulated a research hypothesis beforehand, you should also clearly
specify the variable(s) being tested.
Note that you do not need to go into excruciating detail about exactly how you ran the
experiments (e.g. “Solvent was transferred using a needle and syringe” or “10 mg product was
used to prepare the NMR sample” would probably not be necessary). You could get asked
questions about exactly how the experiments were run, however (e.g. “Did you check that the
brine shrimp were all alive before you used them?” or “What did you do to exclude air and water
from the reaction?”), so it is still essential to know what you did!

5. Results
Provide a summary of your results (and those of your collaborators, if you are using more
than your own data).

6. Discussion
Did your results answer your research question? Were your research objectives fulfilled?
Was your hypothesis supported or refuted, or was data inconclusive? Was your hypothesis
flawed, or was the data flawed? Why do you think that is? What further experiments would you
propose to better investigate the research question at hand (another scheme/flow chart might be
helpful)?
This section asks the exact same question you have encountered in the Post-Labs, except
that in answering it, you would want to avoid “wall of text” reflections. Breaking them up into
bullet points would be a better idea.

7. Conclusions
Summarize your most important conclusions. Keep in mind that “the data is
inconclusive” or “further experiments are needed” are also valid conclusions!

Grading

Your grade will depend on the structure and clarity of your presentation, the thoroughness
of your discussion of the experimental results, as well as your performance in the Q & A session.
In general, minimalist aesthetics are encouraged for scientific presentations – so forego
“noisy” backgrounds and excess animation/effects that do not add to the overall clarity of your
presentation. One exception to this is temporalizing (i.e. not presenting all the material on a
slide at once, but breaking your material into parts and having them appear in sequence as you
talk about them); well-temporalized slides are easier for the audience to follow, and very much
encouraged.

Teamwork

As teammates, you are expected to divide the work equally, and convene often to work on
this project together. This includes work on the slides, as well as dividing up presentation time
(i.e. all team members should be presenting some of the slides). Team members will also take
turns to respond to audience questions. At the time of the presentation, each team will be asked to
hand in a document detailing each member’s contributions .

Consultation

If you are unsure about what to include or how best to present the material, you can ask
them during your lab section next week. Keep in mind that the closer to “finished form” your
presentations are, the better quality feedback we can give you, so it would be smart to have at
least something ready by the time you talk to us!