Description

The data mining assignments were designed to start you on your research for the case study presentations that you will do during the last part of the semester. Now that you and the other members of your group have uncovered articles about the particular case you’ve been assigned, you should know quite a bit about the issues at the heart of the case you’re working on. The aim of the assignment is to present both sides of the debate regarding the language rights/language conflict issue at hand. It may not always feel like there are two reasonable sides to these issues, but it’s important to understand the motivation and point of view of each ‘side’. You should remember that task of the group is to present the perspective of each side of the conflict. We understand that you, personally, might not agree with the side whose perspective you’ve been assigned to present, but it generally works best, for the purposes of the group presentation, if you present the material for your particular side in an unbiased manner.

Each member of your group must adopt a position on your case, either in support of granting language rights or in support of denying them. This needs to be worked out in advance of the presentation.  Even though you are advocating for one particular side, you should be familiar with each side of the issue. At this point, most of the groups have 6 members, so each side of the debate is equally represented, but there are some groups with 7 members. In those cases, it is up to the members to work out which side of the debate will have an extra person on the team.

 

• Each side of the debate will make a collaborative (10-minute) PowerPoint presentation. The group, as a whole, will come to an agreement on how to put these PP presentations together into a single, coherently organized presentation (20 minutes in total, complete with introduction and conclusion).
• This will be followed by approximately 10 minutes of questions from the audience, including the instructor and the TAs (and, presumably, will include answers from your group).
• Students in the audience will write a short evaluation of each presentation, and give it a rating. Evaluation forms will be posted on ICON; you will need to print out and bring an evaluation form for each scheduled presentation, beginning April 16. (There will be two presentations for each class session, so you’ll need to bring two copies of the evaluation form.) These evaluations will be collected at the end of the presentation session; failure to bring and complete these evaluations will result in a reduced participation grade for the day.
• Your single presentation PowerPoint (combining the slides from both sides of the presentation) should be emailed to the instructor and the TAs at least 24 hours prior to your scheduled presentation. (The file may be in either PowerPoint or pdf format.) IN ADDITION, after the presentation has been completed, each member of the presenting group must email us a short statement (one or two paragraphs) describing their own contribution to the presentation, their honest assessment of the contributions of the other members of the group, and their assessment of the overall group dynamic in preparing for the presentation (How did it go? Were there any problems? Did everyone contribute fairly?).
• Please note that you may divide the work in whatever way suits you best (e.g. some members of a group might be more skilled at and comfortable with designing and creating the PowerPoint, while others might be better at oral presentation). It is not required that everyone in the group take part in the oral presentation, but everyone must contribute equal effort to the project.
• Presentations will begin April 16.

Content of the presentation:

• Introduce the members of your group and their affiliation (affirmative or negative; Flemish or Walloons; Basque or Spanish; etc.).
• Provide a brief (approximately 2-3 minutes) background for the conflict. Include some basic facts about the languages involved (What language family/families do they belong to? What languages are they related to? What kind of writing systems are involved?) and some basic historical/cultural/political background that sets the context for the conflict/debate/issue.
• Elaborate the facts of the conflict (What are the laws pertaining to this conflict? What is the legal context? How does this conflict affect the people in the minority group? in the majority group?), and the perspective that your side of the debate has on it (7-8 minutes). What are the arguments in support of your side of the debate? (i.e., what are the arguments for minority language rights, or what are the arguments against?)
• Present any solutions to the conflict which would be reasonable and fair for your side (1-2 minutes).
• You may either decide to sharply divide your presentation according to sides of the issue, so that all of the negative side’s materials are presented first, followed by all of the affirmative (or vice versa, of course), or you may decide to do a presentation in which the two sides’ materials are more integrated. (For example, you could present the introduction and lay out the facts of the conflict as a whole group, and then have each side present its perspective on the conflict separately, followed by a portion where each side discusses fair and reasonable solutions to the conflict. (This integrated approach has, generally, worked very well for class presentations in the past.))

Content of the PowerPoint file:

• Your PowerPoint should consist of a title slide, 1-3 introductory/background slides, about 7-10 content slides per side, and one or more slides listing references.
• The title slide should have a title, along with the names of the members of the group who contributed to the presentation.
• Reference slides should have bibliographical information, alphabetical by author, for all sources used. Note that you need not include URLs for materials gotten from the internet.
• Content slides may include text, images, maps, graphics, and any other matter which aids the presentation. Aim for roughly one slide per minute of presentation. Do not include too much text on a slide, and don’t use any font smaller than 20 pt for text.

Audience participation:

Please be aware that attendance at ALL presentations is mandatory. You will be expected to evaluate and rate the presentations of other students in the class, and those evaluations will be collected and added to the Question & Comment portion of your grade. Being absent for someone else’s presentation will also result in a 3% reduction in the grade that you earn for your own presentation (for instance, someone who earns 100% on their own presentation, but who is absent for all 11 other presentations, will have their presentation grade reduced to 67%).

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