Seminar in Distributed Computing (FS 2011)

• Summary
• Organization
• Schedule of Presentations
• Suggested Papers

 

Summary

Organization

 

When & Where: Wednesdays 15:15 @ ETZ G 91

Coordinators:

• Roger Wattenhofer
• Stephan Holzer

 

As a seminar participant, you are invited to

• present one, two or three research paper(s) assigned to your presentation date, and lead the discussion;
• attend all talks of the seminar and actively participate in the discussions.

 

In order to obtain credit points for the seminar, you have to make a presentation. Since only one presentation per week of the semester can take place, there is a limited number of slots (topics) that can be presented (usually 13 or 14). Therefore, we encourage you to contact Stephan Holzer and the mentor corresponding to your favorite topic as early as possible (by email) to claim your presentation slot.

 

Presentation

Below we have a series of suggested papers (or groups of papers) which will be assigned on a first-come-first-serve basis. You will be advised by the corresponding mentor (see list).

All presentations should cover the motivation for the problem as well as some technical parts of the paper(s) in detail. Assume that the other participants know nothing about the subject. You are not supposed to present the whole paper(s), but just the aspects that were most intriguing to you. We encourage you to deviate from the logical structure of the paper(s) and strive for the most lucid presentation of the topic. It can also be helpful to go beyond the list of your papers and look at related work.

We further expect the presentation to motivate a lively discussion. Your presentation should not be a mere transfer of knowledge, but inspire an animated debate among the seminar participants.

Your slides and talk should be in English. The presentation should last 45 minutes plus about 15 minutes of discussion.

 

Discussion

We encourage discussion during and after a presentation as a main objective of this seminar. The extent to which your own presentation instigates discussion as well as your own participation in the other presentations will influence your grade in this course.

 

Evaluation

Following the technical part of the presentation and discussion, we will briefly evaluate the quality of the presentation as a group. Below are the criteria according to which we judge a good presentation. They were inspired by the common questionnaire handed out to ETHZ students where they are asked to evaluate their professors.

• Motivated Talk
  The speaker was motivated and kept the audience interested throughout the presentation.
  R1: Der Dozent / die Dozentin bot einen engagierten Unterricht.
• Clearly Explained
  The speaker made the material clear and comprehensible.
  R2: Der Dozent / die Dozentin vermochte den Stoff verständlich und anschaulich zu erklären.
• Knowledge Transfer
  The (awake and participating) audience learned something.
  S2: Der Wissenstransfer fand statt im Zusammenhang mit der Vorlesung.
• Difficulty
  The presentation was (too) difficult, easy, or just right to follow.
  S4: Die Vorlesung war [zu] schwierig/einfach, gerade richtig.
• Prior Knowledge
  The speaker did not assume inappropriate prior knowledge.
  S6: Die Vorlesung baute auf bekannten Vorkenntnissen auf.
• Structure
  The presentation had a clear concept and discernable structure.
  S8: Der Dozent / die Dozentin präsentierte seinen/ihren Unterricht strukturiert (Aufbau, Transparenz, roter Faden).
• Encouraged Participation
  The speaker actively encouraged participation and successfully led the discussion.
  S9: Der Dozent / die Dozentin ermutigte aktive Mitarbeit und ging gut auf Fragen und Bemerkungen ein.
• Media
  The speaker made good use of the available presentation tools such as overhead, whiteboard, etc.
  S10: Der Dozent / die Dozentin setzte die verwendeten Hilfsmittel, wie Wandtafel, Overhead und Demonstrationen, gut und hilfreich ein.

 

For signed-up students

 

We established the following rules to ensure a high quality of the talks and hope that these will result in a good grade for you:

• At least 5 weeks before your talk: first meeting with your mentor (you need to read the assigned literature before this meeting).
  
• At least 3 weeks before your talk: meet your mentor to discuss the structure of your talk.
  
• At least 1 week before your talk: give the talk in front of your mentor who will provide feedback.
  
• At the presentation date we expect an electronic copy of your slides.
  

 

Furthermore we recommend you to read the following links helping you to give a good talk:
How to prepare slides
How to prepare and give a talk (in German) - targets mathematicians but applies to us as well except that we will use projector-slides.

Schedule

Suggested Papers

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