INSTRUCTIONS AND GRADING CRITERIA FOR THE FORMAL PRESENTATION OF YOUR THESIS WORK
PSC-4099
Spring 2016
Drs. Mark Setzler
The two most important assignments this semester are the final draft of your thesis and a formal oral
presentation of your project. The talk is worth 25 percent of your final course grade.
The oral presentation is described in your syllabus in the following way:
Each student will give a professional, technology-enhanced presentation of his or her thesis
research and take audience questions. Your presentations and the Q&A session will each last a
total of 15-20 minutes. Your presentations will be assessed for their content, analysis,
organization, delivery, and engagement of the audience. The presentation grade will be jointly
determined by the course instructors.
What criteria will be used to assign the overall grade on your presentation? Your instructors will jointly
apply the University’s standard grading rubric to assign your presentation grade. As such:

A-range grades will be awarded only to presentations that are “of a markedly superior quality.”

B-range grades will be assigned to presentations that are “excellent” and thus “clearly above
average.”

C-range grades will be given to presentations that are “satisfactory” and consistent with the
performance of an “average student” at a typical college.

The grade of D will be assigned to student presentations that are “unsatisfactory,” such that the
presentation fails to meet the basic requirements of the senior seminar.

The grade of F will be recorded if the presentation is not given.

Plus and minus grades will be used in instances where the quality of thesis falls somewhere in
between these rubric categories.

Student attendance at all of the student presentations mandatory. Should you miss one or more
presentation sessions without a suitable explanation (arrange for exceptions in advance if you
have other obligations), your presentation grade will be deducted by one grade per missed
session.
What are the specific expectations for the presentation? While there will be a gap between your
presentation and submission of the final draft of your thesis, it nonetheless is imperative that your talk
be completely polished. Treat this as a professional presentation similar to what you would give if you
were employed as a young professional assigned to give talk summarizing several months’ work to an
audience that includes important clients of your firm and your supervisor. Craft and deliver the talk in
way that will allow a non-expert on your issue to understand completely what your argument is and
what evidence supports it. Do not read it, but have an outline handy for reference. Dress professionally,
and make it obvious that you have practiced your talk. Be articulate, clear, and fully engaged with the
audience. Your PPT slides should be as flawless as you can get them, paying close attention to
formatting, grammar, spelling, and aesthetics. Make sure that your charts, tables, and text
summaries are elegant and easy to read from the back of the room. Your charts should reflect the ability
to use Excel to great bar graphs that effectively communicate statistical findings.
What content needs to be in the talk? It should be carefully focused on a portion of your data larger
analysis and organized in a way that emphasizes the key methodological elements, findings, and
conclusions of your work. Specifically:

Identify your main research question/s and explain why it/they are worth studying.

Carefully identify your dependent and independent variables and state clearly how they are
measured by various survey questions. If you will be looking at one or two key independent
variables as well as some control variables (i.e. factors that are probably related to variations in your
dependent variable, but that aren’t the main focus of your research project), make this distinction
clear.

Explain your initial expectations when you started your research and why you held these
expectations (i.e., list your hypotheses and clearly summarize the logic and the previous research
behind them)

Present quantitative data analyses in charts and tables that you have generated by using SPSS to
analyze one or more PEW datasets. Every chart and table in your presentation needs to have been
authored by you, using your own analysis of a dataset.

Make sure that at least some of your data analyses examine the relationship between your main
independent and dependent variables. Thus, while it is acceptable focus your talk on certain aspects
of the larger project, we need to see the extent to which you have found the relationship
anticipated by your hypotheses.

Use and report the appropriate (including multivariate regression) statistical methods and tests for
the research question/s and hypotheses examined in your work.

State the main conclusions that you have reached and the basis of those conclusions. Your
presentation conclusions should be obviously related to and derivable from the research
analyses that you also have presented in the talk.