Presenting a Research Paper
This lesson plan was a part of the "EDUC 198 Directed Research in Education course" which I started teaching in Fall 2021. Course participants are Research Assistants (RAs) for the UCI Working Memory and Plasticity Lab (WMP Lab). This course is an introductory and supplementary class for undergraduate/new RAs who are doing research for course credit. In addition to their lab responsibilities, RAs are required to complete the assigned readings and a final project.
For this assignment, RAs will introduce, respond to, and present an empirical research paper of their choice. This paper can be from other classes, readings they’ve done for UROP, or just of personal interests. Below are the instructions and resources for RAs.
Purpose
This is meant to mimic a class meeting where each person can present and lead a discussion. You will be asked to ask one thought-provoking question related to the presented study to your peers at the end of the video. In your presentation, you are telling the story of the paper on what has happened, why is it important, and how it relates to you and your interest. This means that you need to read and understand the paper! If you are unsure of how to read a research paper, you can refer to last quarter's reading and/or this video for tips.
Format
Zoom Recording - The most common (easiest) way of doing this is to do a presentation over Zoom and record it. Here is a video tutorial on how to record presentations in Zoom. You will also need to have your camera on during the presentation. If you have challenges with the webcam, please let me know and I'm happy to lend you mine or have you use the lab laptop.
Make sure to save it locally so you can upload your video to this page. You can refer to this page on how to save locally.
Selecting a Paper
Once again, you have the option to select a paper of your choice, but it must be a peer-reviewed and published experimental research paper (can be qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-method). Other research papers such as case studies, meta-analysis, etc. or published papers such as book reviews, call for actions, etc. are not suitable for the purpose of this assignment and should not be selected. If you have questions, feel free to reach out and ask me.
Not all published papers are good for presenting. A good paper for this type of presentation should include the following feature:
clearly state its significance - you can find this information in the introduction
clearly state its research questions - you can find this information in the abstract or right before hypothesis/method
has a straightforward procedure - you can find this information in the procedure, but basically, your paper should clearly state the type of experiment they did instead of very vague information about what was conducted
have a strong conclusion - after reading the Discussion section, a good presenting paper should give you clear information on how this finding can help others, whether it's making recommendations for future studies, resolving theoretical disagreement, calling attention to an overlooked issue, etc.
Template & Instructions
You can find the presentation PowerPoint template here. On each slide, I included specific questions for to you address and answer. You do not have to use this exact PPT as the template for yours if you want to switch up the theme, but you DO HAVE TO follow the structure (i.e. your presentation should include all the slides) and answer the listed questions. In another word, you can change the design, but you need to follow the content.
Resources
Here are two videos I've found online that could help you in preparing your presentation.
Here is an honors thesis presentation from a student. The presentation was conducted in person, but it gives you a good idea of what and HOW you could share the literature, design, and findings from your chosen paper.
Here is a tutorial on how to prepare and present papers at a journal club. I was going to make a very similar video myself but Dr. Yonis did a great job covering everything!
Improving journal club presentations: https://www.med.upenn.edu/mdresearchopps/assets/user-content/Resources/ImprovingJournalClubPresentations.pdf
How to lead a journal club: https://www.bumc.bu.edu/kottonlab/files/2021/05/how-to-lead-journal-club.pdf
